An Electricity-to-Fuels Research and Deployment Platform for Ireland

Project Description

The purpose of this project is to gather essential engineering data about the performance of electrocatalytic cells for carbon dioxide reduction to drop-in transportation fuels. This data will be used to design and optimise a device of superior performance to state-of-art. A key innovation in the proposal is to create an agile computational modelling platform that will describe the essential physics and chemistry occurring in such devices to high fidelity. This will allow engineers not knowledgeable in the area to design and prototype such devices numerically at low time and materials costs. To achieve these goals, a prototype electrochemical cell for carbon dioxide reduction to CO2, methane and methanol will be created and its performance determined. A multi-physics model will then be written to describe the chemical reaction kinetic sand fluid mechanics which the device manipulates. The model will subsequently be exercised to define the optimum conditions at which the cell device could function. Finally the optimized cell will be constructed and its performance verified. In parallel work, a society and industry stakeholder group will be convened such that the important potential actors will be educated and made aware of the technology. This will allow then allow commercial opportunities to be identified and the most realistic pathways to impact identified and enacted.