The UJI’s INAM seeks to develop a sustainable alternative for the production of ethylene with the European project SUN2CHEM



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## The UJI’s INAM seeks to develop a sustainable alternative for the production of ethylene with the European project SUN2CHEM The project, based on artificial photosynthesis, is financed with three million euros

12/06/2020 |
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The project aims to design, build and validate a photoelectrochemical device capable of transforming CO2 into ethylene, in a sustainable and profitable way, to be transferred to the European industry

The researchers Beatriz Julián, Víctor Sans and Sixto Giménez from the Institute of Advanced Materials (INAM) at the Universitat Jaume I are participating in the European project "Novel photo-assisted systems for direct Solar-driven redUctioN of CO2 to energy rich CHEMicals" (SUN2CHEM), one of the research projects in artificial photosynthesis financed by the European Commission in 2020, with almost three million euros.

This project, which will begin in April and will last three years, aims to design, build and validate a photoelectrochemical device capable of transforming CO2 into ethylene, in a sustainable and profitable way, to be transferred to the European industry. The Universitat Jaume I team will be responsible for developing one of the terminals of the final device, which consists of an electrochemical cell; more precisely, they will carry out the anode part (positively charged electrode) of the cell.

Ethylene is one of the most important compounds in the chemical industry and is the most widely used organic compound worldwide. Almost 60% of its industrial production is used to obtain polyethylene, which is one of the most common plastics, with an annual production of approximately 80 million tons worldwide. The SUN2CHEM project aims to offer a sustainable alternative to the production of this material, which is currently being carried out through the fragmentation or cracking of heavy hydrocarbons from the refinery (mainly ethane, propane, naphtha and diesel), with the consequent emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. In this sense, SUN2CHEM seeks to reproduce the process of plant photosynthesis (artificial photosynthesis) to obtain high value-added chemical compounds, such as ethylene, using only sunlight, water and CO2 as raw materials.

In this way, the process proposed by SUN2CHEM not only does not generate greenhouse gases such as CO2, but also acts as a CO2 sink, transforming this molecule into high value-added products. Thus, the research proposed at SUN2CHEM will contribute to the transition from the current energy model, based on fossil fuels, to a sustainable and environmentally friendly model focused on solar energy.

The SUN2CHEM project has a strongly multidisciplinary approach that encompasses materials science, physics and chemistry, device engineering and advanced characterisation techniques, as well as incorporating aspects of social acceptance of the technology, life cycle analysis and market analysis. The project is coordinated by Professor Michael Gratzel, from the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPLF), and involves 12 European institutions from eight countries (Switzerland, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Spain) together with three Asian institutions from Singapore, China and Japan.

Together with the DROP-IT and PEROXIS projects, SUN2CHEM is the third project that the INAM achieves in 2019, which means raising more than one million euros in European funds for the period 2020-2023.

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