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UI chemist finds better way to create
methanol from natural gas

From UI Communications
The soaring cost of gasoline has rekindled an interest by Americans in alternative fuel sources. The work of University of Idaho chemist Gus Davico may lead the way for liquid methanol to become a realistic alternative to petroleum.

Davico, along with student researchers working in his lab, has identified a better way to convert methane from natural gas to methanol. The discovery could lead to safer, less expensive alternatives to transport natural gas to consumer centers and to provide feedstock for the chemical industry.

“We found a catalyst that is environmentally friendly; one that catalyzes the reaction at very low temperatures,” said Davico. “It’s quite efficient, and it’s based on iodine.”

Currently, metal-based catalysts, such as platinum are used. Davico says these elements are extremely expensive. Also, the reaction uses more energy since it takes place at a very high temperature and degrades the environment since the metal, which contaminates the product, is distributed into the atmosphere when the methanol is used.

“Iodine is much more benign,” said Davico.

It is also quite a versatile element. In solution form, it is used as a topical antiseptic. As a salt, it is an additive to table salt. Now, as an ion, it provides the answer to a problem organic chemists have spent years looking for – how to efficiently and selectively break the carbon-hydrogen bond in hydrocarbons.

“From a chemistry point of view, this reaction is a milestone,” he said.

Prior work by scientists in California and the Netherlands identified iodine as a possible catalyst for the reaction. But the equipment to test iodine as a catalyst did not exist.

Davico and his students spent nearly four years and $250,000 in grant money to design and build a piece of equipment where the reaction could occur and be studied in detail.
“It is mostly homemade,” said Davico.

Over the past four years, two graduate students and four undergraduate students assisted in building the instrument.

“It gave the students a whole different educational experience,” said Davico.

He remembers when a specialized moving crew had to be hired to lift a two-ton pump to his second-floor lab in Renfrew Hall. “The first time we turned it on, the whole building rattled,” said Davico. “We had to do some modifications.”

The work paid off.

“Our instrument gave us the capability to do things others couldn’t,” said Davico. “We were able to nail down how the reaction happened and why it happened, which allows for a rational design of even better catalysts.”

The researcher says work will continue to enhance the properties of iodine as a catalyst. He also will look at other elements and compounds that could prove to be an even more efficient catalyst.

Davico’s work has been published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry and Chemical and Engineering News, the news magazine of the American Chemical Society.