Photothermal conversion of CO₂ into CH₄ with H₂ over Group VIII nanocatalysts: an alternative approach for solar fuel production

Xianguang Meng; Tao Wang; Lequan Liu; Shuxin Ouyang; Peng Li; Huilin Hu; Tetsuya Kako; Hideo Iwai; Akihiro Tanaka; Jinhua Ye

doi:10.1002/anie.201404953

Photothermal conversion of CO₂ into CH₄ with H₂ over Group VIII nanocatalysts: an alternative approach for solar fuel production

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2014 Oct 20;53(43):11478-82. doi: 10.1002/anie.201404953. Epub 2014 Jul 17.

Authors

Xianguang Meng¹, Tao Wang, Lequan Liu, Shuxin Ouyang, Peng Li, Huilin Hu, Tetsuya Kako, Hideo Iwai, Akihiro Tanaka, Jinhua Ye

Affiliation

¹ Environmental Remediation Materials Unit and International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (WPI-MANA), 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044 (Japan); Graduate School of Chemical Science and Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0814 (Japan).

PMID: 25044684
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201404953

Abstract

The photothermal conversion of CO2 provides a straightforward and effective method for the highly efficient production of solar fuels with high solar-light utilization efficiency. This is due to several crucial features of the Group VIII nanocatalysts, including effective energy utilization over the whole range of the solar spectrum, excellent photothermal performance, and unique activation abilities. Photothermal CO2 reaction rates (mol h(-1) g(-1)) that are several orders of magnitude larger than those obtained with photocatalytic methods (μmol h(-1) g(-1)) were thus achieved. It is proposed that the overall water-based CO2 conversion process can be achieved by combining light-driven H2 production from water and photothermal CO2 conversion with H2. More generally, this work suggests that traditional catalysts that are characterized by intense photoabsorption will find new applications in photo-induced green-chemistry processes.

Keywords: carbon dioxide; hydrogenation; photothermal effects; solar fuels; transition metals.