Utilisation of Solar Energy and Electrocatalytic Processes for the Low Energy Conversion of CO2 to Fuels and Chemicals

当前的主要科学和技术挑战之一涉及以有效和经济上可行的方式将二氧化碳转化为燃料和有用的产品。这项建议是为了应对开发低能耗路线将二氧化碳转化为燃料和有用化学品的重大挑战。该项目有以下四个主要方面：（i）利用可再生技术产生的电力以电催化方式减少CO2，我们将开发新的方法，包括使用离子液体溶剂来活化CO2。在那里，我们将应用计算程序来预测这一关键催化过程的新材料，并随后进行实验测试（iii）（iv）详细的生命周期分析，评估新技术在多大程度上达到发展低碳燃料的整体目标。因此，我们的方法旨在：直接通过电催化途径或间接通过太阳能产生的氢气在CO2利用中利用可再生能源来形成燃料和/或化学品。该方法的不同组成部分将被充分整合，以实现这一关键过程的连贯一致的新的低能耗技术，同时严格的生命周期分析将确保它满足对低能耗技术的需求。

One of the major current scientific and technological challenges concerns the conversion of carbon dioxide to fuels and useful products in effective and economically viable manner. This proposal responds to the major challenge of developing low energy routes to convert carbon dioxide to fuels and useful chemicals. The project has the following four main strands: (i) The use of electricity generated by renewable technologies to reduce CO2 electrocatalytically, where we will develop new approaches involving the use of ionic liquid solvents to activate the CO2(ii) The use of hydrogen in the catalytic reduction of CO2, where we will apply computational procedures to predict new materials for this key catalytic process and subsequently test them experimentally(iii) The development of new materials for use in the efficient solar generation of hydrogen which will provide the reductant for the catalytic CO2 reduction(iv) A detailed life cycle analysis which will assess the extent to which the new technology achieves the overall objective of developing low carbon fuels.Our approach aims, therefore, to exploit renewably generated energy directly via the electrocatalytic route or indirectly via the solar generated hydrogen in CO2 utilisation for the formation of fuels and/or chemicals. The different components of the approach will be fully integrated to achieve coherent, new low energy technologies for this key process, while the rigorous life-cycle analysis will ensure that it satisfies the need for a low energy technology.