[FPU2019] Innovative catalytic materials for reduction of CO2.

Nowadays the economical and societal development relies heavily on fossil fuels in both developed and developing countries. A major drawback of this development pattern is the accumulation of an enormous quantity of the greenhouse gas CO2 in the atmosphere (400 ppm)  that has a significant role in climate change. To mitigate the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere various strategies have been implemented such as the reduction of the amount of CO2 produced, storage of CO2, and usage of CO2. Although all they have been explored for many years, the usage of CO2 is presented as an economical, safe, and attractive renewable carbon source for making organic chemicals, materials, and carbohydrates. Hydrogenation reaction, an important representative among chemical conversions of CO2, offers challenging opportunities for sustainable development in energy and the environment. The hydrogenation of CO2 into more useful fuels or chemicals uses hydrogen as the required high-energy material for transformation. Specifically, an excellent option would be the use of the excess of electricity from renewable power plants to produce hydrogen. With the increasing penetration of solar and wind technologies for electricity generation, the production of renewable hydrogen becomes an attractive option to reduce CO2, while decreasing the global CO2 emissions and becomes a sustainable alternative to conventional production of hydrogen via fossil fuels reforming. In this perspective, the catalytic conversion of CO2 and H2 to methane (Sabatier reaction) or hydrocarbons is of great interest.

Thus, the general objective of the project will be the development of efficient catalytic technologies to produce methane (also hydrocarbons) via reduction of CO2 using hydrogen produced from renewable energy sources (wind and sun). The research work will include the synthesis, characterization and testing of innovative catalytic materials to achieve the methanation of CO2 at low reaction temperatures and alternatively, to produce hydrocarbons in only one step. A wide spectrum of characterization techniques will be combined with catalytic studies to find the connection between the activity and the most important physical-chemical properties observed. The mechanism of reaction over the innovative catalytic materials will be also investigated. Much work has gone into establishing the mechanism of CO2 hydrogenation, but to date no consensus on the kinetics and mechanism exists in the field. Transient measurement techniques to measure gas phase components time evolution and diffuse-reflectance infra-red (DRIFT) spectroscopy to identify species on the catalyst surface will be used to propose the mechanism of the CO2 hydrogenation over the selected catalysts.