Currently, you are not logged in to my. Therefore, you can remember a maximum of 5 contents. With the new climate protection Act, Germany has committed to achieving greenhouse gas neutrality by To achieve this, emissions must be avoided, CO2 removed from the atmosphere and fossil fuels replaced with renewable energy sources.
A new research project at Paderborn University, in which so-called "transition metal CO2 batteries TMBCs " are to be developed, is in the service of these efforts. The batteries promise not only to store renewable energy, but also to reduce CO2 emissions. Current hurdles range from the low solubility of carbon dioxide to the high overvoltage that occurs during the conversion of gaseous CO2 to a solid carbonate in the cathode.
In addition, unwanted by-products formed during this process damage the cathode materials. For comparison: conventional lithium-ion batteries have two electrodes. An anode - colloquially referred to as the negative pole - and a cathode, the positive pole, where energy is stored through various chemical reactions. However, they have a major weakness, as "lithium-ion batteries are not recyclable. We are therefore looking at the TMBCs product cycle from the outset in favor of sustainability aspects," adds de los Arcos de Pedro.
This is where CO2BATT comes into play: "Using advanced X-ray spectroscopy, we want to gain an in-depth understanding of the interactions in CO2 reduction on carbon-based cathodes enriched with transition metals such as iron, zinc or aluminum. This is the way to develop new, fully recyclable batteries that generate energy from the CO2 they remove from the atmosphere," continues de los Arcos de Pedro.
To achieve this, it is important to know the specific sites on the carbon-metal surface that influence the conversion of transition metal ions into a carbonate through CO2 reduction. However, this has hardly been researched so far.
