Ambient-pressure hydrogenation of CO<sub>2</sub> into long-chain olefins.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35504867.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-29971-5 and PMC identifier 9064975.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The conversion of CO<sub>2</sub> by renewable power-generated hydrogen is a promising approach to a sustainable production of long-chain olefins (C<sub>4+</sub><sup>=</sup>) which are currently produced from petroleum resources. The decentralized small-scale electrolysis for hydrogen generation requires the operation of CO<sub>2</sub> hydrogenation in ambient-pressure units to match the manufacturing scales and flexible on-demand production. Herein, we report a Cu-Fe catalyst which is operated under ambient pressure with comparable C<sub>4+</sub><sup>=</sup> selectivity (66.9%) to that of the state-of-the-art catalysts (66.8%) optimized under high pressure (35 bar). The catalyst is composed of copper, iron oxides, and iron carbides. Iron oxides enable reverse-water-gas-shift to produce CO. The synergy of carbide path over iron carbides and CO insertion path over interfacial sites between copper and iron carbides leads to efficient C-C coupling into C<sub>4+</sub><sup>=</sup>. This work contributes to the development of small-scale low-pressure devices for CO<sub>2</sub> hydrogenation compatible with sustainable hydrogen production.