Background

As climate change becomes a priority on the global agenda, governments and industries are working hard to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂ ) and other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.

Through the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, countries are pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Recently, CO₂ has been recognised as a valuable carbon source that can be used for fuel or chemical production. This strategy may improve the economic competitiveness of the CO₂ capture and storage plants and offer a pathway to close the carbon cycle within the human socioeconomic system.

Technologies that enable waste carbon dioxide to be captured and converted into useful compounds are in high demand. CO₂ capture and utilisation are important pathways to reduce CO₂ emissions. Although CO₂ is a valuable resource to create valuable products which will lower the cost of CO₂ capture, unfortunately, the conversion steps necessitate the use of high purity CO₂ as a feedstock. This requires intensive energy input for the CO₂ separation process in the capture stage. However, there are still many critical issues to solve to improve the economic potential of the CO₂ capture and utilisation strategy.

Technology Overview

Oxford researchers have developed a practical solution to capture and in-situ convert CO₂ within a single process. This reduces financial and energy costs with a simpler process and realises higher energy efficiency for the capture and conversion of CO₂.

Benefits

• CO₂ capture occurs quickly with high efficiency and can be in-situ activated without consuming huge amounts of energy.
• There is no need to activate the catalyst by using hydrogen.
• The in-situ CO₂ conversion process is extremely fast using microwave-assisted catalysis. The microwaves can be originated from renewable electricity to avoid extra CO₂ emission during the capture and in-situ conversion process.
• The supported catalyst materials are easily available and earth-abundant, and our catalyst preparation method avoids the huge and detrimental emission of nitrogen oxides created by traditional methods.

Opportunity

The technology is the subject of a UK priority patent application with scope for international protection in the future. Oxford University Innovation would like to speak to potential industrial partners with an interest in developing the technology further.