Conducting Field Tests to Advance Artificial Photosynthesis
Funded through Round 2 of ERA’s Grand Challenge: Innovative Carbon Uses in 2017, this project was a follow-on project that successfully developed and field-tested a solar-powered system that converts carbon dioxide. It demonstrated efficient, selective CO2 conversion under real sunlight, informing potential future large-scale deployment of artificial photosynthesis technology.
Traditional methods for turning CO2 into fuels use very high temperatures, high pressures and/ or extremely reactive chemicals. As a result, this process is not economically feasible or environmentally friendly. In this project, researchers at McGill University demonstrated a CO2 transformation system that mimics photosynthesis by using sunlight to turn CO2 and water into useful fuels like methane and syngas. These value-added products have wide marketability and can offset the cost associated with CO2 capture. The key part of the system is a special material made from tiny metal-nitride wires, called nanowires, which act like a solar-powered catalyst. These nanowires help speed up the chemical reactions that turn CO2 into fuel, without needing high heat or pressure. It’s designed to be efficient, stable over time and cheap to produce using materials already common in the electronics industry. The system reduces emissions by utilizing captured CO2 and decreasing the amount of energy required in traditional methods, therefore reducing the emissions associated with artificial photosynthesis.
Improving Designs and Boosting Efficiency
The project taught the team several important lessons about how to improve and scale up the technology. One key learning was that the combination of metal and metal oxide materials plays a significant role in making the CO2 conversion process more efficient. By combining specific metals and metal oxides on the surface of the nanowire catalysts, the system created more active and selective reaction sites, which made the conversion to methane and syngas much more efficient. Another lesson came from building and testing the system outdoors early in the project. This helped identify issues like poor gas flow in reaction chambers, which were fixed by redesigning the chambers to be thinner and allow better fuel release. The team also learned that working with industry partners early on brought valuable insights into how the technology could be used in real-world settings, especially in Alberta’s energy sector. These experiences helped show that the technology is not only promising in the lab but also has strong potential for real-world use. Barriers to commercialization remain; however, commercial use will require the nanowires to be produced at a low cost on a large scale, while maintaining the efficiency and stability as shown in these lab discoveries.
What’s next?
While this project demonstrated the technical feasibility of nanowires for artificial photosynthesis, the project unfortunately failed to progress to the final round of the Grand Challenge and achieve further commercialization. After the Round 2 project’s completion in 2020, McGill researchers have not performed any further work in Alberta.