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Chemically and electrochemically catalysed conversion of CO2 to CO with follow-up utilization to value-added chemicals

Nature Catalysis volume 1, pages 244–254 (2018)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 11 December 2018

This article has been updated

Abstract

Carbon dioxide is ubiquitous and a vital molecule for maintaining life on our planet. However, the ever-increasing emission of anthropogenic CO2 into our atmosphere has provoked dramatic climate changes. In principle, CO2 could represent an important one-carbon building block for the chemical industry, yet its high thermodynamic and kinetic stability has limited its applicability to only a handful of industrial applications. On the other hand, carbon monoxide represents a more versatile reagent applied in many industrial transformations. Here we review the different methods for converting CO2 to CO with specific focus on the reverse water gas shift reaction, main element reductants, and electrochemical protocols applying homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts. Particular emphasis is given to synthetic methods that couple the deoxygenation step with a follow-up carbonylation step for the synthesis of carbonyl-containing molecules, thus avoiding the need to handle or store this toxic but highly synthetically useful diatomic gas.

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Fig. 1: Transformation of CO2 to value-added chemicals.
Fig. 2: Application of CO produced from the RWGSR into a variety of chemical transformations.
Fig. 3: Boron and silicon based reductants for CO2 conversion.
Fig. 4: Electrocatalysts exhibiting a FEmax ≥ 90% for CO2-to-CO conversion.
Fig. 5: Electrochemical CO2-to-CO conversion coupled with CO utilization for carbonylation reactions.
Fig. 6: Future challenges.

Change history

  • 11 December 2018

    In the version of this Review Article originally published, the received and accepted dates were missing, and the published online date of 10 April 2018 was incorrect; they should have read ‘Received: 24 December 2017; Accepted: 28 February 2018; Published online: 16 April 2018’. This has now been corrected.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Danish National Research Foundation (grant no. DNRF118) and Aarhus University for financial support.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Dennis U. Nielsen and Xin-Ming Hu.

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  1. Carbon Dioxide Activation Center (CADIAC), Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center, Department of Chemistry, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Dennis U. Nielsen, Xin-Ming Hu, Kim Daasbjerg & Troels Skrydstrup

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Correspondence to Kim Daasbjerg or Troels Skrydstrup.

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T.S. is co-owner of SyTracks a/s, which commercializes the two-chamber system, COware.

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Nielsen, D.U., Hu, XM., Daasbjerg, K. et al. Chemically and electrochemically catalysed conversion of CO2 to CO with follow-up utilization to value-added chemicals. Nat Catal 1, 244–254 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-018-0051-3

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