From pollution to solution: Optimizing CO2 conversion for a sustainable future

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are fueling climate change—causing extreme weather, rising sea levels, and harm to ecosystems.

Researchers from the University of Toronto (U of T) have found a way to optimize a device that helps convert CO2 into a variety of useful products including ethanol, plastics, and even pharmaceuticals.

CO2 electrolyzers (machines that uses electricity to break a substance—most often water—into its original parts), use electricity to turn CO2 and water into carbon monoxide (CO), an industrial gas used for making fuels such as ethanol, plastics, and even pharmaceuticals. Some electrolyzers work by being compressed or pressurized. However, the tiny pores inside these devices can become clogged with liquid and salt crystals if too much compression pressure is applied, which hinders their performance.

The U of T team used the Canadian Light Source (CLS), a national research facility at the University of Saskatchewan, to study in microscopic detail the inner workings of an electrolyzer while it was running.  They found that reducing the compression pressure to 10% from 20% or 30% prevented blockages and maximized output of CO. The researchers published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

“The pores in our device are about 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. We needed the CLS to study our device at that level of resolution,” says Tess Seip a recent PhD graduate, who worked on this project along with postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Aida Farsi, who led the study at the U of T.

The research was completed by Seip and other members of the Bazylak Group. Professor Aimy Bazylak is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Clean Energy, in the UofT’s Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.

The researchers are excited about the prospect of industries adopting this technology. It can be used to convert CO2 before it’s released into the atmosphere, Seip says, to create other useful products, decrease companies’ carbon footprint, and protect the environment.

“As our societies grow, we're always going to need energy and we're always going to need to make materials to move society forward. CO2 electrolyzers can help address both of those needs at the same time, while moving us toward a greener future,” says Seip.

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Farsi, Aida, Vasant Batta, Alexandre Tugirumubano, Tess Seip, and Aimy Bazylak. "Impact of over compressing gas diffusion electrodes in alkaline zero-gap CO2 electrolyzers." Scientific Reports (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-42959-1 

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