Using Carbon Dioxide to Produce Graphene, An Innovative Alternative Energy material

Graphene can act as an insulator and superconductor.

It is a general consensus that carbon dioxide is considered to be adding to greenhouse gases and its global warming effect. However, for chemical reactions, carbon dioxide can also be a helpful raw material.

Carbon dioxide is significant for chemical reactions, a scientific research group has now announced at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), on this phenomenon and how it could be applied in a way to increase the development of an essential material that could revolutionise clean alternative energy harnessing, with Carbon dioxide. They discovered they could utilise carbon dioxide as a raw material to produce graphene, a technological material which is currently the subject of intense study.

Back in 2011, Justin Hall-Tipping was the first scientific pioneer to use graphene in Nano Solar energy, which was a huge innovation in nanotechnology, that few people still have not heard much about today. This technology will put an end to nuclear and coal power stations. Tippin and his group of nano-tech and solar energy scientists produced a clear film of transparent plastic, that you can stick to your window, turning a window of any building into a an electricity generator or a modern power station to produce all your power needs or send others energy if they need it.

The entrepreneur, Justin Hall-Tipping, sought out the world’s leading nanotechnology scientists to harness the electron and create energy through nanotechnology, now they have a company called Nanoholdings, which consists of team of scientists, investors and innovators working at the cutting-edge of nanotechnology to develop solutions to the world’s growing energy problems. Working in partnership with the world’s best universities, they have developed products and companies that will revolutionise the way we use and generate energy. Imagine you live in a building that has very large windows, you can use each window much like a solar panel, simply by using a thin plastic film with energy harnessing systems, embedded inside the film as fine or finer than a human hair, the plastic sheet can be stuck onto the window panes of a house or office building to use the light and heat energy beaming in through the window. This becomes a powerhouse using nanotechnology to convert light energy from the sun to power up the building for heat or to cool or generate electricity and if it is not required there, it can then be sent to someone else who needs it more.

(Hall-Tipping, 2011).

Now this new discovery about graphene announced at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), on using Carbon dioxide to produce graphene, adds even more exciting developments to the nanotechnology exotic altenative energy possibilities of the future of free energy.

The current archaic combustion of fossil fuels, includes coal and oil which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and even more so when the oil or gas has been drilled from the Amazon rainforest. Every day, destruction of vast areas of rainforest is at a critical scale, the trees and disturbed soil, where the carbon dioxide had been naturally sequestered, (acted as a carbon sink before being disturbed), are then released into the atmosphere. Cutting this causal chain is what motivates Kit scientists to search for the opportunity of producing electricity from graphene, but additionally for alternative uses of carbon dioxide. One opportunity could be to look at carbon dioxide as a valuable resource for the synthesis of other precious elements, sequestering it back to the natural cycle, the result would not only clean up the planet, but also provide cleaner energy materials and off grid resources.

An example can be found in nature. During photosynthesis in the leaves of plants, the combination of light, water and carbon dioxide creates biomass, closing the natural material cycle. In this process, it is the job of the metal-based enzyme RuBisCo to absorb the carbon dioxide from the air and make it usable for the further chemical reactions in the plant. Inspired by this metal enzyme-based natural conversion, researchers at KIT are now presenting a process in which the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide together with hydrogen gas is converted directly into graphene at temperatures of up to 1000 degrees Celsius with the help of specially prepared, catalytically active metal surfaces.

The team of scientists were inspired by a metal enzyme-based natural conversion, therefore they are actually presenting a system wherein the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide together with hydrogen gas is converted at once into graphene at temperatures of up to 1000 degrees Celsius, with the assist of specifically prepared, catalytically active metallic surfaces. This innovation was drawn from the role it has in photosynthesis in plants, the combination of water, sunlight and carbon dioxide creates biomass, the metalic-based enzyme RuBisCo can soak up the carbon dioxide from the air and make it usable for more chemical reactions in the plant.

Graphene is the two-dimensional form of the chemical element carbon, and as mentioned earlier has been used in nanotechnology to enhance solar energy cells to be able to harness energy through a transparent plastic film. Graphene has been used in a number of alternative energy generators and is known to have interesting electrical properties and is therefore an choice for innovative off-grid clean alternative energy generators, likely to be met with the same counterpressures as other alternative generators however the difference is this is nanotechnology, this industry has been growing rapidly and there is a great deal of money in this system, It is unlikely this innovation can be derailed in the same way other forms have. Its discovery and workability in 2004 brought about international, intensive studies and earned the discoverers, Andre Geim and Konstanin Novoselov, received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010.

The Scientific workgroup at Kit have join forces to publish and present the technique within the ChemSusChem journal for setting apart graphene from carbon dioxide and hydrogen by way of a metal catalyst. "If the metal surface exhibits the correct ratio of copper and palladium, the conversion of carbon dioxide to graphene will take place directly in a simple one-step process," explains the head of the study, Professor Mario Ruben, from the Molekulare Materialien working group at the Institute of Nanotechnology (INT) and the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry (AOC) at KIT.

In other developments with graphene, the research group have been even capable of produce graphene several layers thick, which might be exciting for feasible programs in batteries, digital compounds, or filtering compounds. Following research is to form functioning energy components from the graphene. Carbon based materials such as graphene and magnetic molecules could be the constructing blocks for future quantum computers along with other possibilities. Therefore, using Carbon Dioxide to produce Graphene, could develop exotic nanotechnologies even more as a driver for graphene based electrity generators in alternative energy and help restore climate balance at the same time,. The days of the coal or nuclear power stations are numbered as graphene and nanotechnologies are developing.

Written by Carlita Shaw
Author of The Silent Ecocide

You can also follow my ecological projects and articles on Ecosequor Wordpress. Thanks
https://ecosequor.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/our-appetite-for-state-of-the-art-technology-is-causing-ecocide-but-most-people-are-more-concerned-about-the-extinction-of-the-cell/

Original Press Release at Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT).
Website: http://www.kit.edu/index.php

Journal Reference:

Concepción Molina‐Jirón, Mohammed Reda Chellali, C. N. Shyam Kumar, Christian Kübel, Leonardo Velasco, Horst Hahn, Eufemio Moreno‐Pineda, Mario Ruben. Direct Conversion of CO 2 to Multi‐Layer Graphene using Cu–Pd Alloys. ChemSusChem, 2019; DOI: 10.1002/cssc.201901404

Image source- pubs.rsc.org