New Type of Battery To Utilize Pollution

Recently, researchers at MIT successfully developed a new type of battery that could be made partly from carbon dioxide captured from power plants. It sounds to be a great concept utilizing the pollution emitted and to use it for generating renewable power. The new battery composition could open up new channel for altering electrochemical carbon dioxide conversion reactions, which may ultimately help lower the emission of the hazardous greenhouse gas to the atmosphere.

At present, power plants equipped with carbon capture systems normally use up to 30 percent of the electricity that they generate just to power the capture, release, and storage of carbon dioxide. Anything that can curtail the cost of that capture process, or that can result in a valuable end product, could undoubtedly change the economics of such power generation systems, the researchers stated. The battery is created with ingredients like lithium metal, carbon, and an electrolyte that the researchers devised. The conclusions are enumerated in the journal Joule, in a paper by assistant professor of mechanical engineering Betar Gallant, doctoral student Aliza Khurram, and post-doctoral student Mingfu. “Carbon dioxide is not very reactive,” Gallant believes, so “trying to find new reaction pathways is important.” Mainly, the only instance to get carbon dioxide to exhibit compelling activity under electrochemical conditions is with large energy inputs in the form of high voltages, which can be an expensive and inefficient process. Exquisitely, the gas would endure reactions that produce something constructive, such as a useful chemical or a fuel. Nonetheless, efforts at electrochemical conversion, customarily conducted in water, remain hindered by high energy inputs and poor selectivity of the chemicals produced. According to Assist Prof. Gallant, this concept offers great potential. Carbon capture is widely considered essential to meet worldwide goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but these are not yet proven, long-term ways of disposing of or using all the resulting carbon dioxide. Underground geological disposal is still the leading contender, but this approach remains somewhat unproven and may be limited in how much it can accommodate. It also requires extra energy for drilling and pumping. Conclusively, the team aspires to erect this into an integrated system that will carry out both the capture of carbon dioxide from a power plant's emissions stream, and its conversion into an electrochemical material that could then be used in batteries. "It's one way to sequester it as a useful product," Assist Prof. Gallant concluded.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180921140146.htm