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4 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jan 29, 2026 09:18 PM IST
Carbon dioxide released from furnaces, fireplaces and factory chimneys is one of the most common contributors to air pollution. Every day, huge volumes of this gas are sent into the atmosphere as a byproduct of heating homes and running industrial processes. However, now scientists may have discovered a way to address the issue at its roots. A new technology has been developed that can extract carbon dioxide directly from exhaust gases and turn it into a valuable chemical rather than releasing it into the atmosphere.
The research, published in ACS Energy Letters on January 21, introduces a newly designed electrode that combines carbon capture and conversion into a single step. Rather than first separating and concentrating CO₂, the system works directly with gas mixtures that closely resemble real-world exhaust. In lab experiments, the electrode performed better than current solutions when exposed to simulated flue gas and even had potential at carbon dioxide concentrations comparable to those in ambient air.
According to Wonyong Choi, one of the paper’s corresponding authors, the main innovation is to consider capture and conversion as a single process. In other words, by combining both processes through a single electrode, they showed that there is a much simpler approach to using carbon dioxide as a resource, rather than a waste.
Why CO₂ conversion is such a challenge
Carbon dioxide removal from the air could seem simple, especially since plants and trees do it naturally. The real difficulty begins once the gas has been captured. In order for carbon capture to be economically viable on a large scale, the CO₂ needs to be converted into something of value. This is the part of the process that most of the current methods have difficulty with, as they need pure, concentrated carbon dioxide to be effective.
In a real-world exhaust stream from a power plant or a furnace, carbon dioxide is mixed with a lot of nitrogen and some oxygen. To solve this, the research team set out to build a system that could operate under realistic conditions, using exhaust gas as it actually exists.
Their answer is a three-component electrode that enables gas to flow through while performing two tasks simultaneously. One component traps carbon dioxide, a gas-permeable carbon paper in the second component enables smooth gas flow, and a final catalytic component composed of tin oxide converts the trapped CO₂ into formic acid.
Formic acid is already used in industrial manufacturing and is also being explored as an energy carrier for fuel cells. Producing it directly from exhaust gas could make carbon recycling far more practical.
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When tested with pure carbon dioxide, the new electrode showed about 40 per cent higher efficiency than current alternatives. The advantage grew under simulated flue gas conditions, where other systems struggled to produce meaningful output. The device even worked at low CO₂ levels similar to those in the atmosphere, suggesting broader future applications.
The researchers say this approach could open the door to real-world carbon reuse systems and may eventually be adapted to handle other greenhouse gases as well. The study was supported by funding from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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