Harnessing nanomaterials built from abundant elements, scientists at McMaster University have created a catalyst that matches the performance of precious metals in turning carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide.
Many countries are working to lower carbon emissions in response to the growing climate crisis. Now, the Canadian research team behind the recent studies at McMaster is exploring a promising new approach: using catalysts comprised of nano-sized materials that accelerate chemical reactions to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into useful products.
Nanomaterials are very small—sometimes millions of times thinner than a human hair—yet they can have a major impact on industrial processes.
Previous research has shown that catalysts often rely on precious metals such as platinum, gold, and silver. While highly effective, these materials are expensive, scarce, and difficult to scale for large-scale CO2 conversion. Alternatives based on more abundant elements like nickel, nitrogen, and carbon have been investigated, but so far they have struggled to match the efficiency of their precious-metal counterparts.
Now, researchers at McMaster University in Ontario may have found a viable solution.
“We wanted to develop a new catalyst that is stable, very active, and also relies on metals and materials that are relatively abundant,” said Dr. Drew Higgins, associate professor in McMaster’s Department of Chemical Engineering and lead researcher on the project, in a statement.
The McMaster team created a catalyst by embedding tiny particles of nickel zinc carbide into a nickel–nitrogen–carbon framework. Laboratory tests showed it was highly efficient at converting CO2 into carbon monoxide (CO), an important building block in chemical processes such as methanol production and synthetic fuel generation.
“Metals such as gold and silver are very efficient for converting CO2 into carbon monoxide,” Dr. Drew Higgins, Faculty of Engineering at McMaster University, told The Debrief in an email. “However, they are expensive, precious metals that have limited abundance in nature.”
“Relying on nickel, nitrogen, and carbon allows us to use materials that are relatively inexpensive and abundant,” Higgins said, adding that in the past, “the performance of these inexpensive materials has been insufficient. This work took an important step in terms of providing similar performance to the precious metals at a significantly reduced cost.”
Although the lab results were promising, the team initially struggled to understand why the catalyst worked so well. PhD student Fatma Ismail brought samples to the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, and utilizing ultrabright X-rays at the CLS’s HXMA beamline, the researchers were able to examine the material’s structure at an atomic level.
The investigation revealed the specific role nickel plays in the CO2-to-CO reaction.
“Understanding how the nickel, carbon, and nitrogen (as well as zinc!) atoms within the catalyst chemically bind with each other in a structural way is very difficult to do with the techniques that are available in our university laboratory,” Higgins told The Debrief.
Higgins said that illuminating the problem required shining ultrabright X-rays of controlled wavelengths on the materials to “see” precisely what the structure and chemical properties of each material played in the catalyst, and in particular, “how they are chemically bonded to each other.”
As for what comes next, Higgins said that once the team can demonstrate that this catalyst is effective, they plan to follow that with scaling up the systems.
“We can make these systems much larger so that they can convert much more CO2,” Higgins said.
“[T]hen eventually—ideally—one day we can translate that so industrial companies that have large CO2 emissions could plug this into their smokestack,” he added, “and remove the emissions before they go into the atmosphere, converting it into something that has value and use in society.”
Fundamentally, the team’s research marks an important step toward affordable and scalable climate solutions, and by transforming CO2 from waste into a valuable resource, the new catalyst could play a key role in helping to significantly reduce global emissions.
Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com.