It takes hundreds of millions of years to produce fossil fuels by natural processes but new scientific research is looking to short-cut that process by using waste carbon dioxide (CO2).
To avoid the worst effects of climate change, the world needs to dramatically reduce manmade CO2 emissions from their current levels of 32 metric gigatons. In parallel with efforts to directly reduce CO2 emissions, scientists are also researching methods of carbon capture and utilisation (CCU), which takes CO2 emissions from sources such as coal-fired power plants and uses them in other industrial processes.
One example of the innovative deployment of CCU is in the creation of petrochemicals such as gasoline. Rather than creating gasoline directly from fossil fuels, a CO2 hydrogenation reaction can be used instead to produce it.
New research by Chinese scientists searching for a more efficient approach to hydrogenation sparked interest when it was published in Nature Communications in May 2017.
