Physical regulation of copper catalyst with a hydrophobic promoter for enhancing CO2 hydrogenation to methanol

Hangjie Li; Wei Fang; Ling-Xiang Wang; Yifeng Liu; Lujie Liu; Tulai Sun; Ciqi Liao; Yihan Zhu; Liang Wang; Feng-Shou Xiao

doi:10.1016/j.xinn.2023.100445

Physical regulation of copper catalyst with a hydrophobic promoter for enhancing CO₂ hydrogenation to methanol

Innovation (Camb). 2023 May 22;4(4):100445. doi: 10.1016/j.xinn.2023.100445. eCollection 2023 Jul 10.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Key Lab of Biomass Chemical Engineering of Ministry of Education, College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028, China.
² Key Laboratory of Applied Chemistry of Zhejiang Province, Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028, China.
³ Center for Electron Microscopy, State Key Laboratory Breeding Base of Green Chemistry Synthesis Technology, College of Chemical Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310014, China.

Abstract

The hydrogenation of CO₂ to methanol, which is restricted by water products, requires a selective removal of water from the reaction system. Here, we show that physically combining hydrophobic polydivinylbenzene with a copper catalyst supported by silica can increase methanol production and CO₂ conversion. Mechanistic investigation reveals that the hydrophobic promoter could hinder the oxidation of copper surface by water, maintaining a small fraction of metallic copper species on the copper surface with abundant Cu^δ+, resulting in high activity for the hydrogenation. Such a physically mixed catalyst survives the continuous test for 100 h owing to the thermal stability of the polydivinylbenzene promoter.