MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH: A recent study affiliated with UNIST has developed a system that produces electricity and hydrogen (H2) while eliminating carbon dioxide (CO2), the main contributor of global warming. This breakthrough has been led by Professor Guntae Kim in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST in collaboration with Professor Jaephil Cho in the Department of Energy Engineering and Professor Meilin Liu in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.
In this work, the research team presented a hybrid Na-CO2 system that can continuously produce electrical energy and hydrogen through efficient CO2 conversion with stable operation for over 1,000 hours from spontaneous CO2 dissolution in aqueous solution.
“Carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) technologies have recently received a great deal of attention for providing a pathway in dealing with global climate change,” says Professor Kim. “The key to that technology is the easy conversion of chemically stable CO2 molecules to other materials.” He adds, “Our new system has solved this problem with CO2 dissolution mechanism.”