Berkeley Lab improve process for turning CO2 emissions into fuel feedstock

In California, carbon dioxide (CO2), a product of burning fossil fuels and the most prevalent greenhouse gas, has the potential to be sustainably converted back into useful fuels. A promising route for turning CO2 emissions into a fuel feedstock is a process known as electrochemical reduction. But to be commercially viable, the process needs to be improved, to select for, or to yield, a higher amount of desirable carbon-rich products.

Now, as reported in the journal Nature Energy, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have improved the process’s selectivity by developing a new approach to modify the surface of the copper catalysts used to assist the reaction.