Assistant Professor Mohammad Asadi’s New Electrolyzer System Makes Propane From CO2
Electrolyzers are typically associated with the production of “green” hydrogen from water and renewable electricity, but a new device borrows from traditional electrolyzer principles to convert CO2 into propane. A team of researchers from the Electrochemical Energy Materials and Devices Laboratory at Illinois Institute of Technology, led by chemical engineering professor Mohammad Asadi, have now developed a new catalyst material to target the production of C3 products — using only CO2, water and electricity as inputs — by optimizing the proton-electron transport reaction to ensure there was not excessive production of co-reactants and byproducts.