Do you expect hot sparks to fly when "electrical" meets "thermal"?
How valuable would it be if two different teams working on catalytic reactions - one relying on heat based catalysis and another on electricity based catalysis - started interacting with each other?
We will soon find out as that’s what has started happening at Stanford Univ. ( https://stanford.io/2WbMJvc ), thanks to the synthesis of a new catalyst that can be used for both heat-driven and electricity-driven reactions.
Apparently, these two types of teams even within the same university or research outfits rarely interact - and this in a world where people from different corners of the world can connect within seconds!
Synergies between these two disciplines could hopefully lead to better synthesis of CO2 into chemicals. As a first step, this catalyst can convert CO2 to CO using either of the approaches - heat or electricity. CO can be used for further conversion to liquid hydrocarbon fuels.