Hi, I'm Lizzie, and I'm using a nanoparticle catalyst to convert methane to carbon dioxide,
methane is a very common gas produced in many chemical reactions and also from cows.
We're looking for a way to combat methane, carbon dioxide. You might ask, do we really need more carbon dioxide?
Is that not a greenhouse gas responsible for global warming? Well, yes, you are right.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, but so is methane. However, methane has a warming effect 20 times higher than carbon dioxide.
This means the sun's energy coming into the atmosphere is warm 20 times more
when it passes through methane than when it passes through carbon dioxide.
So although producing carbon dioxide isn't the perfect solution, it is a great step towards reducing the greenhouse effect.
So we've been busy working here to find a catalyst made from palladium and cerium oxide to convert the methane to carbon dioxide.
A catalyst is a material which speeds up our reaction or makes it occur at a lower temperature.
The catalyst we found reduces the temperature of the reaction. Currently, methane can be converted to carbon dioxide at around six hundred degrees C.
This is a very expensive. Imagine having an oven that can get to that temperature.
It would certainly burn your dinner, but when the gas passes through our catalyst,
the temperature at which the reaction occurs is lowered to around two hundred and fifty degrees C.
Now that's the temperature your kitchen oven can probably reach. So how does the Catalist work between the engine and the exhaust?
Is the Kassin sitcom Besta Inside?
That is a mash which is coated in the catalyst and all of the exhaust gas has to pass through it before it is let out into the environment.
So the methane and oxygen molecules from the engine come in, hit the grid and stick to the customer service.
This weakens the bones in the molecules and they can begin to bond together. All the molecules rearrange and carbon dioxide and water are formed.
These are released from the surface and let out of the exhaust using all.
This can only happen at a lower temperature. One similar to the temperature already in your exhaust.
So much less energy and money is needed to do the reaction. So now we have produced all this carbon dioxide.
I've already said that is a greenhouse gas and isn't great for the environment. So you might be thinking it's pretty bad.
Wow. There are a lot of scientists out there working on capturing the carbon dioxide and storing it so we can use it in a useful way,
like inside a kind of coke, a fire extinguisher or even for making paper.
So the cows are slightly more difficult problem to solve,
but maybe one day in the future we'll be able to capture that methane and convert it to something more valuable, like methanol to.