Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	EP/J02161X/1
Title:	Photo-catalytic Microbubble reactor for conversion of CO2 to Fuels
Principal Investigator:	Huo, Dr D
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department:	Mechanical and Systems Engineering
Organisation:	Newcastle University
Scheme:	First Grant - Revised 2009
Starts:	23 January 2013	Ends:	22 March 2014	Value (£):	100,130
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Catalysis & Applied Catalysis Reactor Engineering
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Energy
Related Grants:
Panel History:	Panel Date Panel Name Outcome 20 Mar 2012 Engineering Prioritisation Meeting - 20 March 2012 Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
Many research studies have clearly established correlation between carbon dioxide concentration in earth's atmosphere and global warming. To mitigate the effect of large concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, UK government has committed the 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emission by 2050. According to Energy Statistics by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) report, the contribution of renewable to gross UK consumption has increased from 6.6 to 7.4 per cent in 2010. However, in order to reach the target of the 15% reduction by 2020, massive increase in speed of investment and planning permission approval process will be required. According to report, planning permission and investment are the main hurdles in achieving the renewable energy targets. In such scenario, the transient solution of capturing and converting carbon dioxide would provide alternative route to carbon free future. In low carbon vision 2050 report, it is envisaged that the power plant with carbon capture and storage would be a major technology in clean power segment by 2020. The simultaneous reduction of carbon dioxide with water splitting in presence of sun light and semiconductor catalyst is considered to be attractive strategy in securing low carbon energy in short term. However, this conversion process suffers from the low yield and high processing cost. One way to improve the efficiency is to use novel or modified catalyst. The membrane, nano-TiO2 tubes, and fluidised bed based solutions for CO2 conversion have recently been proposed by the researcher. However, these methods require efficient dispersion of carbon dioxide and mechanism to prevent clogging of porous catalyst nano-particles or nano-tubes. In alternative method, CO2 dissolved in liquid phase is employed to overcome the problem of clogging. But, this method suffers from the low CO2 dissolution in water. Hence, key consideration for this work is to address three problems viz. (i) low dissolution of CO2 in water, (ii) low photoacitivity of TiO2 and (iii) inefficient transfer of electron at interface. This project will employ our novel microbubbling device to prepare the carbon dioxide core microbubbles foam in TiO2 aqueous suspension. The diameter of bubble in few tens of micrometer range promotes the dissolution of CO2. Subsequently foam will be injected into the continuous flow microfluidics photo-reactor where sun light beam will be focused orthogonally to the direction of foam flow. Main advantage of the device is that it can generate the surface plasmon at the interface of two consecutive bubbles. The interface thickness in range of few hundreds nanometre acts as a waveguide and generates the surface plasmon which will be absorbed by the TiO2 particle adsorbed at the bubble interface. Surface plasmon increases the photoactivity of the TiO2 particle and thus, enhances its ability to increase the product yield of the reaction. It is first time foam will be used to generate the surface plasmon. This will allow avoiding costly catalyst surface modification steps.
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Organisation Website:	http://www.ncl.ac.uk