Multifunctional catalysts turn CO2 into multiple hydrocarbons

The catalysts could help reverse the release of CO2 by preventing new emissions without requiring a radical overhaul of existing infrastructure, said Jorge Gascon, who led the research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

CO2 can serve as a raw material for useful hydrocarbons but its high chemical stability presents challenges when transforming it into something more useful.

According to KAUST, several approaches are available to transform CO2 into various hydrocarbons using conventional heterogeneous catalysts. However, these catalysts are severely limited in their ability to tune the product distribution according to the target application, Ph.D. student Abhay Dokania said in a statement.

Gascon’s team devised an approach that exploits several catalysts acting together. The catalysts combine a metal-based catalyst with acidic zeolites to directly transform CO2 into multiple hydrocarbons, including light olefins, aromatics and paraffins.

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According to the team, a mixture of a methanol-producing indium–cobalt catalyst with a zinc-modified zeolite that catalyses methanol-to-hydrocarbon reactions yielded gasoline-grade isoparaffins, such as isobutane and isooctane, with a selectivity of 85 per cent. These high-octane-number hydrocarbons are sought after for their anti-knock performance and fuel efficiency but had been previously ignored as target products, the team said. The high catalyst selectivity is consistent with the zeolite pore structure and tendency to produce branched hydrocarbons.