Energy game-changer: 85% efficient green electricity-powered reactor unveiled

It’s already well-established that fossil fuels are the primary contributors to global warming, accounting for over 75 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions.

This has resulted in the Earth suffering the consequences of rapid climate change. Therefore, scientists have been developing alternatives to fossil fuels to tackle emissions.

In a new development, researchers from Stanford Engineering have devised a new type of thermochemical reactor for industrial purposes that replaces fossil fuels with electricity.

Greener thermochemical reactor for industrial processes

Scientists engineered a thermochemical reactor equipped with magnetic induction to yield high levels of heat needed for industrial processes.

The thermochemical reactor is powered by electricity instead of fossil fuels, making the system more sustainable.

Additionally, the reactor is smaller, cheaper, and more efficient unlike the conventional used fuel-based technologies.

Jonathan Fan, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Stanford and senior author of the paper said that the team has developed an electrified and scalable reactor infrastructure for thermochemical processes that features ideal heating and heat-transfer properties.

“Essentially, we’re pushing reactor performance to its physical limits, and we’re using green electricity to power it.”

Fuel-based reactors not only emit high emissions but also require a relatively large infrastructure and with potential to lose heat in the process of heating such as in boilers.

Akin to an induction stove, the new thermochemical reactor deploys magnetic induction to generate heat within the reactor itself. It eradicated the step of transferring heat via pipes thereby reducing energy loss.

Alluding to an example, researchers explained in an official statement to visualize inductively heating a steel rod. “For example, you could wrap a wire around it and run an alternating current through the coil.”

The oscillating magnetic field induces a current in the steel which is not a perfect conductor. Therefore, the current renders heat in the entire piece of steel simultaneously, instead of just heating the surface.

Efficient heat transportation directly to catalysts

Simply put, the high-frequency currents and materials that are poor conductors of electricity actually allow efficient heat transportation directly to the catalysts that stimulate chemical reactions.

Juan Rivas-Davila, an associate professor of electrical engineering and co-author of the paper devised high-efficiency electronics to produce currents needed in the reactor.

These currents were employed to inductively heat a three-dimensional lattice made of a poorly conducting ceramic material in the core of their reactor according to the statement.

Fan said that the lattice structure is just as important as the material itself because the lattice voids artificially lower the electrical conductivity even further.

“And those voids can be filled with catalysts – the materials that need to be heated to initiate chemical reactions.”

This allowed for more efficient heat transfer while maintaining a smaller size of the thermochemical reactor structure.

“You’re heating a large surface area structure that is right next to the catalyst, so the heat you’re generating gets to the catalyst very quickly to drive the chemical reactions,” Fan says.

“Plus, it’s simplifying everything. You’re not transferring heat from somewhere else and losing some along the way, you don’t have any pipes going in and out of the reactor – you can fully insulate it. This is ideal from an energy management and cost point of view.”

The researchers have successfully demonstrated the reactor’s efficiency and are working on scaling it up and exploring its applications in various industries, including carbon capture and cement manufacturing.

The researchers employed the reactor to drive a high-heat chemical process known as the reverse water gas shift reaction, using a sustainable catalyst from Stanford’s Matthew Kanan. This reaction transforms captured CO₂ into valuable gas for sustainable fuels.

In a proof-of-concept test, the reactor achieved over 85% efficiency, converting nearly all electrical energy into usable heat and facilitating the reaction at the expected rate, according to the press release .

The study was published on August 19, 2024, in the journal – Joule .