The Ministry of Earth and Science announced on Friday that IIT Bombay, India's premier institute, has successfully created an innovative technology capable of transforming carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide.
IIT Bombay is currently focused on finding scalable and cost-effective methods to capture CO2 from different emission sources. The goal is to convert this captured CO2 into useful chemicals or store it permanently. This is an important step towards mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.
The institute also granted a patent for converting CO2 to carbon monoxide (CO) for this technology.
The current process of converting CO2 to CO usually requires temperatures ranging from 400 to 750 °C. Additionally, an equal amount of hydrogen is needed to drive the reaction forward, resulting in a highly energy-intensive process.
The new process developed by IIT Bombay is incredibly efficient, utilizing only a temperature range of 25-40 °C and water. What makes this electrocatalysis reaction truly remarkable is that it can harness the energy from solar panels or windmills, making the technology completely carbon-neutral.