University of Toledo professor Abdul-Majeed Azad believes a new paradigm is needed as the science community considers how to deal with the growing amount and threat of CO₂
in the atmosphere. Azad and his group of researchers believe that scientists are overly obsessed with sequestration approaches and need to
broaden their thinking to include utilizing CO₂ for productive purposes. As noted in Ann’s post yesterday, the DOE’s NETL is starting to come around to this way of thinking, too.

Azad’s approach is fairly simple: If a humidified stream of CO₂ is run over the right catalyst, a mix of CO and H₂ (syngas) results. Then, there are at least two routes to beneficially use these products. One route is to send these gases into a solid oxide fuel cell stack to generate power and heat. The second route is to use the syngas as a precursor for manufacturing valuable organic compounds via a 90-year-old method known as the Fischer-Tropsch process.

Interestingly, Azad’s group has shown that if magnetite – an abundant waste product of the steel industry –  is used as a reaction mediator, it is converted by the CO₂– H₂O stream into maghemite, a strong ferroelectric material that can be processed into magnets.

In this video, Azad discusses some of these concepts and he and his group show the operations of an small-scale demonstration of a CO₂-magnetite-SOFC utilization system.