Imagine being able to use electricity to power your car — even
if it’s not an electric vehicle. Researchers at the UCLA Henry
Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have for the
first time demonstrated a method for converting carbon dioxide
into liquid fuel isobutanol using electricity. Today, electrical
energy generated by various methods is still difficult to store
efficiently. Chemical batteries, hydraulic pumping and water
splitting suffer from low energy-density storage or
incompatibility with current transportation infrastructure. In a
study published March 30 in the journal Science, James Liao,
UCLA’s Ralph M. Parsons Foundation Chair in Chemical
Engineering, and his team report a method for storing electrical
energy as chemical energy in higher alcohols, which can be used
as liquid transportation fuels. “The current way to store
electricity is with lithium ion batteries, in which the density
is low, but when you store it in liquid fuel, the density could
actually be very high,” Liao said. “