Climate change: Carbon dioxide as a sustainable raw material

High CO₂ emissions are one of the main reasons for climate change. Around 90 percent result from the combustion of fossil fuels, for example in the energy sector and the industry. ITAS scientists want to improve this balance and utilize CO₂ from industrial emissions as recyclable material. They pursue this goal together with their partners in two projects funded by the BMBF in the framework of the program “CO₂ as a sustainable source of carbon – ways to an industrial use (CO₂-WIN)“.

“Both projects aim at the photochemical recycling of CO₂ into energetic and chemical value chains to reduce the impacts of climate change and the dependence from fossil fuels,” explains Andreas Patyk, project leader at ITAS. “The two projects pursue complementary approaches here to overcome the considerable obstacles to the industrial use of the basic concept, such as increasing the total yield and selectivity.“ 

In the CO₂SimO project, the researchers develop a novel photoelectrochemical cell that can produce the important energy carrier methane as well as hydrogen peroxide as a valuable oxidant instead of the interfering oxygen.  The PRODIGY project avoids the formation of oxygen and enables the synthesis of higher products by adding suitable reactants to the photoreactor. ITAS is responsible for the R&D integrated sustainability assessments. To this end, the team assesses, among other things, environmental indicators, costs, and social aspects to provide the basis for the optimization of new processes. (04.05.2020)

Further information:

• BMBF CO₂-WIN funding program
• Presentation of CO₂SimO at the bioökonomie.de platform