HomeEnvironmentClimate Change: Methane has so far caused about 30% of global warming...

Climate Change: Methane has so far caused about 30% of global warming since the pre-industrial age

A group of researchers managed to convert methane into methanol using light and scattered transition metals such as copper in a process known as photooxidation. The Chemical Communications, the reaction was the best obtained so far for converting methane gas into a liquid fuel under ambient temperature and pressure conditions (25°C and 1 bar). The term bar as a unit of pressure comes from the Greek word for weight (baros). One bar is equivalent to 100,000 Pascals (100 kPa), which is very close to standard atmospheric pressure at sea level (101,325 Pa).

The results of the study are an important step towards making natural gas available as an energy source for the production of alternative fuels to gasoline and diesel. Although natural gas is considered a fossil fuel, its conversion to methanol releases less carbon dioxide (CO2) than other liquid fuels of the same category. In Brazil, methanol plays a key role in the production of biodiesel and in the chemical industry, which uses it to synthesize many products. In addition, capturing methane from the atmosphere is critical to mitigating the adverse effects of climate change, as the gas has, for example, 25 times more potential than CO2 to contribute to global warming.

“There is a big debate in the scientific community about the size of the methane reserves on the planet. According to some estimates, they may have twice the energy potential of all other fossil fuels combined. In the transition to renewable sources, we will have to use all that methane at some point,” Marcos da Silva told FAPESP , first author of the paper. Silva is a Ph.D candidate at the Department of Physics of the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar).

The photocatalyst used in the study was a key innovation, according to Ivo Freitas Teixeira, professor at UFSCar, advisor to Silva’s thesis and last author of the paper. “Our group has significantly innovated by oxidizing methane in a single stage,” he said. “In the chemical industry, this conversion occurs through the production of hydrogen and CO2 in at least two stages and under very high temperature and pressure conditions. Our success in obtaining methanol under mild conditions while using less energy is a big step forward. “According to Teixeira, the results pave the way for future research into using solar energy for this conversion process, which can further reduce its environmental impact.

In the laboratory, the researchers synthesized crystalline carbon nitride in the form of polyheptazinimide (PHI), using non-noble transition metals or earth-abundant transition metals, especially copper, to produce visible-light active photocatalysts. They then used photocatalysts in oxidation reactions of methane with hydrogen peroxide as an initiator. The copper-PHI catalyst generated a large volume of oxygenated liquid products, mainly methanol (2,900 micromoles per gram of material or µmol.g-1 in four hours).

“We discovered the best catalyst and other conditions necessary for the chemical reaction, such as using a large amount of water and only a small amount of hydrogen peroxide, which is an oxidizing agent,” Teixeira said. “Next steps include understanding more about the active copper sites in the material and their role in the reaction. We also plan to use oxygen directly to produce hydrogen peroxide in the reaction itself. If successful, the process should be even safer and more cost-effective” viable.”

Another point the group will investigate further is copper. “We are working with dispersed copper. When we wrote the paper, we didn’t know if we were dealing with isolated atoms or clusters. Now we know they are clusters,” he explained. In the study, the researchers used pure methane, but in the future they will obtain the gas from renewable sources such as biomass. According to the UN, methane has so far caused about 30% of global warming since the pre-industrial age. Methane emissions from human activity could be reduced by up to 45% in the coming decade, avoiding an increase of almost 0.3°C by 2045.

The strategy of converting methane into a liquid fuel using a photocatalyst is new and not commercially available, but its potential in the near future is significant. “We started our research more than four years ago. We now have much better results than the results of Professor Hutchings and his group in 2017, which motivated our own research,” Teixeira said, referring to a study by researchers affiliated with universities in the United States and the United Kingdom and led by Graham Hutchings, a professor at Cardiff University in Wales.

Source Reference: Marcos A. R. da Silva et al, Selective methane photooxidation into methanol under mild conditions promoted by highly dispersed Cu atoms on crystalline carbon nitrides, Chemical Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1039/D2CC01757A

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