Surrey team aims for methanol from direct air capture

The project aims to capture CO2 directly from the air and use dynamic catalysis to create carbon-negative methanol whose value could offset the cost of direct air capture.

EPSRC has awarded the project £250,000 under its Adventurous Energy Research for a Sustainable Net-Zero scheme.

In a statement, Dr Melis Duyar, project lead from Surrey University, said: "Synthesising methanol would constitute a significant advancement, coupling a presently expensive but necessary method of CO2 capture from the air, with the production of a substance that can bring some revenue to offset costs and further incentivise the scaling up of direct air capture.

"The main challenge for our project will be reconciling the fact that commercial methanol synthesis takes place at high pressures [50-100 bar] and moderate temperatures [200-300^oC], while direct air capture is typically carried out in ambient conditions. We want to show that it is possible to produce methanol in mild conditions through dynamic catalysis."

If successful, the Surrey team will extend their project to show it is possible to synthesise other chemicals with a negative carbon footprint, including sustainable fertiliser.

"Pulling chemical building blocks directly out of the air can create a 'just in time' process that will help us finally say goodbye to safety hazards such as storing large quantities of chemicals,” said Dr Duyar. “Importantly, this process could boost the economy by spurring carbon-negative growth, as well as provide fuel security for the UK."

The International Energy Agency has identified direct air capture and storage as one of the three biggest opportunities to achieve Net Zero and methanol production using hydrogen and CO2 as an important innovation gap.

According to Surrey University, a significant advantage of direct air capture technology is that it does not rely on extensive land and water use, unlike alternatives such as biomass.