ICCDU XVII, the most important international conference on carbon dioxide utilization (ICCDU XVII), awarded Sotacarbo with the “best poster” prize. Quite an achievement considering the significant number of works presented to more than 320 international experts who joined the conference in Aachen (Germany).

The work “Experimental development of advanced catalysts for methanol and DME production from CO2 for energy storage applications” (authors: Mauro Mureddu, Sarah Lai, Elisabetta Rombi, Luciano Atzori, Francesca Ferrara, Alberto Pettinau), focuses on the development of advanced catalysts for the production of high value liquid fuels (such as methanol and dimethyl ether) from recycled CO2 and renewable hydrogen. The study was carried out in collaboration with the University of Cagliari, within the “Centre of Excellence on Clean Energy” funded by the Regional Government of Sardinia.

This development of some advanced catalysts, capable of promising performance, was highly regarded in the conference. One of those catalysts performed significantly better than the others commercially available, with the further advantage of being already active, without the need of the expensive and critical activation process. “We have managed to combine new preparation methods with advanced materials. The result is a catalyst with an unrivalled level of performance. Nobody has achieved that so far”, Mauro Mureddu (researcher at Sotacarbo and lead author of the awarded work) says. The very promising catalyst is currently protected by an international patent application (PCT).

“We know the value of our work, but we are very proud that this value has been acknowledged by the international scientific community and, in particular, by the industry, that can take a great advantage by our results”, Alberto Pettinau (Sotacarbo scientific director and co-author of the experimental study) says.

This award follows the ones in Pittsburgh (United States, 2017) and Berlin (Germany, 2018).