CU Boulder researchers develop new way to produce low carbon fuels from renewables

In Colorado, University of Colorado Boulder’s Weimer Lab has introduced an efficient and economical method to use renewable energy to produce fuel, opening doors to clean and sustainable energy sources for a wide array of industries, including transportation, steelmaking and ammonia production.

The groundbreaking study, detailed in the high-impact journal Joule, outlines a thermochemical process using solar energy to derive either hydrogen gas from water or carbon-neutral fuels from water and carbon dioxide. The new paper marks the first exploration of running this process at elevated pressure.

Their findings indicated that for specific materials, elevating the pressure not only accelerated the reaction rate but also significantly increased the amount of fuel produced.