Carbon capture research wins science prize

Carbon capture and recycling technology can deal with emissions from fossil fuel energy production by turning them into naturally occurring chemicals, like methane, adding financial, energy and renewable value, according to Distinguished Professor Tianyi Ma.

While carbon capture and storage often face criticisms for potentially prolonging or expanding the use of fossil fuels, they are necessary because “for a long while, we’re still going to rely on fossil fuels, so we’re going to find a way to deal with the emissions,” Ma, a scientist at the Royal Melbourne Institute for Technology in Victoria, Australia, told Cosmos.

Ma won the 2024 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year in the Prime Minister’s 2024 Science Prizes.

While carbon capture techniques are quite “mature”, the development of carbon recycling technology is not as advanced, Ma says, and there are still “fundamental and engineering challenges that need to be solved”.

“But to me, utilisation is like the ultimate solution for carbon capture… if you store it, it’s still there…but if you can utilise the CO₂ and add value to your supply chain that would be perfect,” Ma says.

Ma and his team are pursuing that carbon recycling process, in order to convert carbon dioxide emitted during the production of energy into ‘solar fuels’. It uses a catalyst to “electrochemically” convert the carbon dioxide using green electricity from solar energy, into fuels or the raw materials of fuels, such as green methane, methanol and carbon monoxide.  

And when countries transition from fossil fuels, that carbon recycling technology won’t be scrapped, Ma says, instead it could used for ‘direct air capture’ and utilisation – the process of extracting carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and converting it into fuel.

The Prime Minister’s Science Award compliments awards he has previously won for research developing cheap “water batteries” that can’t catch fire, and his work on green hydrogen production.

The water batteries can be recycled much more easily than lead-acid or lithium batteries and are also cheaper, and the “catalytic hydrogen production” involves splitting water molecules (H₂O) to produce hydrogen and oxygen.

Unlike other models for ‘green hydrogen’ production, Ma’s research doesn’t require solar panels to collect energy and convert it to electricity – it uses a semiconducting nanomaterials coated device to capture solar energy and directly generate green hydrogen.

For Ma and his team, their green new tech is “a whole supply chain”, making up what he calls a “catalytic renewables refinery” – meaning it uses catalysts to refine the renewable energy sources to hydrogen and other “value-added chemicals”.

Ma says that the award for his research in the renewable energy field is “an indication that Australia is putting more and more focus, more and more energy, effort into this direction, to give us a sustainable, clean future”.

“It’s an honour for the team, for my whole team at RMIT because… at the end of the day… it’s a teamwork, it’s not all by myself,” Ma says.

Read more about Tianyi Ma and carbon capture