That means less platinum is required to make the catalyst. Wu said his research group discovered the thin layers essentially allow every platinum atom to be used as a catalyst and prevents the formation of residues that cover and deactivate the platinum. The catalyst consists of one or two layers of platinum, each layer just an atom thick, deposited on two-dimensional metal carbide structures called “MXenes.” In this case, the structures are made from carbon, molybdenum and titanium. The Iowa State University Office of Innovation Commercialization is seeking a patent for the technology. Zhe Li, who earned a doctoral degree at Iowa State in 2019 and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, is the first author. Wu and Yang Xiao, a senior research engineer in the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering at Purdue University in Indiana, are corresponding authors. Stiles Professor in Chemical Engineering at Iowa State.Ī research paper recently published in the journal Nature Catalysis reports the discovery. “The results provided a potential solution to this long-time challenge and represented the best stability, conversion rate, and selectivity to convert methane to ethane or ethylene, two main precursors for the modern petrochemical industry,” according to a project summary written by Wu, the Herbert L. Now, they and a group of collaborators have found and tested a catalyst technology that appears to be an answer. Yue Wu and his research group at Iowa State University have been looking for ways to do all that over several years of experimental failures and discoveries. So, is there another way to use methane and keep it out of the atmosphere? One that’s safe and efficient? One that returns value? One that helps fight climate change? Other conversion reactions aren’t very efficient and also produce the most abundant of the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide. That’s expensive and potentially explosive. Typically, that involves high temperatures and mixing the flammable gas with oxygen to produce syngas to make methanol and hydrogen to make ammonia. A methane molecule is just one carbon atom and four hydrogens.īut those carbon-hydrogen bonds are hard to break. It’s not that the primary component of natural gas is chemically complex. emission restrictions, is hard to break down and keep out of the atmosphere. Photo by Christopher Gannon.ĪMES, Iowa – Methane, which produces more warming than other greenhouse gases and is the subject of newly announced U.S. Behind the engineers is an instrument that uses spark plasma sintering to produce the catalyst. Chemical and biological engineers Yue Wu, professor, right, Xiaopeng Liu, doctoral student, left, and Fan Yang, postdoctoral research associate, center, are part of the team that's developed a catalyst that converts a greenhouse gas into chemicals used to make plastics and other materials.

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