A sustainable fuel and chemical from the robotic lab

A new fully automated research infrastructure with AI is accelerating the development of chemical catalysts

21-Feb-2024 - Artificial intelligence and automated laboratory infrastructure are massively accelerating the development of new chemical catalysts. With these tools, researchers at ETH Zurich are developing catalysts for efficiently and cost-​effectively synthesising the energy source methanol from ...

Industrial areas become industrial hubs for the Circular Economy

The European Union wants to be the first digitally-led, climate-neutral and sustainable Circular Economy

19-Feb-2024 - In a functioning circular economy, different sectors must work together and symbioses between different technologies are a key prerequisite. To achieve this, systemic change is necessary. A consortium of 35 organizations from various countries in Europe is working on this in the Horizon Europe ...

Watching a Bimetallic Catalytic Surface in Action

Such insight on working catalysts is only possible to obtain using state-of-the-art experimental techniques under reaction conditions

01-Sep-2023 - A team of researchers from the Department of Interface Science at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society addressed the question: what happens to a Ga-promoted Cu surface under reaction conditions required for the synthesis of methanol? They found complex structural transformations of ...

Fraunhofer ISE Demonstrates First Long-Term Methanol Synthesis from Blast Furnace Gas in a Miniplant

Process Optimization with the Digital Twin

19-Sep-2022 - Methanol plays an important role for industry as a commodity chemical and is presently considered one of the key energy carriers in the rising hydrogen economy. However, conventional methanol production from coal and natural gas generates large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. With the ...

Caught in the act: Key chemical intermediates in pollutant-to-fuel reaction identified

Such work will help convert an atmospheric pollutant into fuel for vehicles, and chemical feedstocks for industry

11-Jul-2022 - Researchers from the University of Tsukuba and collaborating partners experimentally measured hydrogenation of metal-adsorbed formate. This development will facilitate practical conversion of carbon dioxide pollutant into methanol fuel. Carbon dioxide pollution continues to change the global ...

Cascade from methanol to hydrogen

Metha-Cycle decouples wind power from electricity demand

05-Oct-2020 - Chemists at the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT) in Rostock are able to produce hydrogen from methanol under mild conditions of less than one hundred degrees Celsius and ambient pressure, with the yield and purity required for fuel cells. To achieve this, they optimized a proprietary ...

Insights into the structure of an enigmatic catalyst

05-Aug-2020 - In the past, the catalyst for the production of methanol had eluded all attempts to clarify its surface structure. Now researchers have learned more about its active site. Methanol is one of the most important basic chemicals used, for example, to produce plastics or building materials. To render ...

Efficient indium oxide catalysts designed for CO2 hydrogenation to methanol

Promising way to directly convert CO2 into methanol for industrial applications

23-Jun-2020 - Catalytic hydrogenation of carbon dioxide (CO2) is a green and sustainable means of synthesizing commodity chemicals such as methanol. This conversion process is key to realizing the "methanol economy" or creating "liquid sunshine", both aspects of the circular economy. Recent studies revealed ...

A Glimpse into Real-Time Methanol Synthesis

Dynamic Operation of a Miniplant at Fraunhofer ISE

11-May-2020 - Methanol will gain importance as a chemical energy carrier in the course of the energy transformation. As part of the "Power-to-Methanol – Green Methanol" project, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE successfully commissioned a miniplant for methanol synthesis –the production of ...