**A new method to convert CO2 and exploit it to our advantage rather than throw it into the atmosphere promises high levels of efficiency, but the road to industrialization is still long.**

![](https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2016/10/13/14/28/tablet-1737896_1280.jpg)
[Credits Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/en/tablet-iman-apple-pollution-action-1737896/)
The idea of ​​subtracting carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere to limit global warming and damage to climate change is not new and many attempts have been made to intercept it and store it, and inject it on the ocean floor or in the Earth's crust where time would [turn into calcareous rock](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6291/1312). Numerous research has also explored the possibility of transforming the greenhouse gas into something useful : it is in this line of research that the study coordinated by the [Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL)](https://www.bnl.gov/world/) is inserted and conducted by researchers from American, Canadian and Chinese universities. Scientists have identified a substance (an electrocatalyst) that efficiently converts CO2 into carbon monoxide (CO) , which is a highly energetic molecule: the procedure is described on [Energy & Environmental Science](http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2018/ee/c7ee03245e#!divAbstract) .

![](https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/08/03/09/20/pollution-2575166_1280.jpg)
[Credits Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/en/pollution-factory-industry-smoke-2575166/)
One of the researchers, Eli Stavitski (BNL), explains that 
>"carbon monoxide can be reacted with water to produce hydrogen , to be exploited for energy and to synthesize useful chemicals, such as hydrocarbons and alcohols".

Even the idea of ​​converting CO2 to CO is not new, but the electrocatalysts used so far have never led to concrete results as it creates a competitive reaction to the desired one, called [Hydrogen Evolution Reaction](http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph240/wang-ha1/) (HER). In fact, some noble metals, such as gold and platinum, avoid HER and convert CO2 into CO, but they are too rare and expensive to be considered useful.



The road traveled for this research is completely new: the scientists used single nickel atoms (28-Ni). 
>"Nickel has rarely been selected as a promising candidate for the conversion of CO2 into CO", says Haotian Wang (Harvard University, USA), "because it also gives rise to HER and because its surface can be easily compromised by molecules of CO, when they are produced. "The novelty lies in the fact that instead of using nickel in more or less high quantities, the researchers used single atoms and this led to completely different results. "It seems that individual atoms" prefer "to produce CO rather than perform HER: in other words, a nickel surface behaves very differently from single atoms".

![](https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/04/14/17/23/netherlands-2230828_1280.jpg)
[Credits Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/en/netherlands-nederland-above-boven-2230828/)
What differs profoundly is the energy that is formed around an extended surface of nickel compared to that which is around a single atom, and it is this difference that governs the final reaction, which from CO2 leads to CO instead of to HER.
The monitoring of reactions with instruments such as [transmission electron microscopy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_electron_microscopy) showed that individual nickel atoms catalyzed the conversion with an efficiency of 97%, a result that goes well beyond expectations. Now it is all about understanding how to transform a complex study into a practical and industrializable method, as long as it is possible.

### Reference for Further Reading 

[TECHNOLOGY](https://www.technology.org/2018/03/05/converting-co2-into-usable-energy/)


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Big Thanks to @enginewitty for this cool Banner

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