A UBCO researcher is investigating clean and efficient energy technologies as part of the movement to reduce the use of carbon-intensive fossil fuels.
As many nations work to go green, a significant question remains unanswered: how can the world decarbonize energy supplies in a sustainable, efficient and economically viable manner?
Dr. Robert Godin, an Assistant Professor of Green Chemistry in UBC Okanagan’s Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, is working to find the answer.
In a recent study co-authored by Dr. Godin and published in the Royal Society of Chemistry, he explains the urgent need to decarbonize energy supplies, and how precise processing of a material called carbon nitride may be the key.
Fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas have energized economies for more than 150 years—can you explain the urgency in moving away from these types of energy? Why the rush?
There are a number of reasons why we need to shift to sustainable sources of power—one being to slow down the progression of climate change. It’s abundantly clear that we need to decarbonize our energy supplies to reach our net zero emission targets. One powerful analysis is the Net Zero by 2050 report from the International Energy Agency. It states that massive deployment of all available clean and efficient energy technologies is required to meet these goals.
What other types of fuel can supply this energy?
The generation of synthetic fuels is gaining traction as an alternative to carbon-intensive fossil fuels. When synthetic fuels are generated by sunlight, we refer to them as solar fuels, which have the potential to be sustainable.
What are some challenges associated with these other types of fuel?
One of the biggest issues in trying to identify alternatives is their cost. If we can’t find a way to bring the cost down to the same as fossil fuels or lower, there will unfortunately be barriers for many to adopt them.
Can you explain the research presented in this paper?
We were looking at a new way to control the shape of inexpensive photocatalysts that can generate solar fuels, with the aim of improving their efficiency and cost-competitiveness when compared to fossil fuels.
To do this, we worked with a material called carbon nitride—it is an organic semiconductor made from inexpensive and abundant commodity materials that shows promising photocatalytic activity. However, there are open questions as to what is the best way to prepare carbon nitride when considering complexity, cost and efficiency. To tackle this, we need better information on how modifications made to carbon nitride can impact efficiency.
Ultimately, we were able to devise a new way to control the shape of carbon nitride particles. While we didn’t yet obtain better performance with our method, we did see a completely new shape, like fibrous webs, that wasn’t obtainable with the traditional method.
We’re confident that by refining our method, we can produce more solar fuels than with typical carbon nitride.
Could the results of this research have other applications? And where do you go from here?
Beyond decarbonizing energy, our results are significant to the overall field of photocatalysis, which is becoming increasingly popular as a synthetic method in industrial processes that make drugs, cosmetics, polymers and more.
For next steps, now that we have a general method established we can look at refinements to ensure our starting material gets converted to a type of carbon nitride that is a good photocatalyst.
If we can solve that problem, then we can expand the types of shapes we make to be able to find which ones perform best, and why.
