Cheap catalyst could help turn carbon dioxide into fuels

What is the fuss about the life essential trace gas CO2 all about! We can capture/remove or convert it anytime in any amount! Recycling CO2 is feasible!

This is not the only research paper or report in recent years describing a method to convert CO2!

"... The new molybdenum-based catalyst joins others on the mission to cheaply convert CO2 to CO. In 2020, for example, Yuvuz and his colleagues reported in Science that a nickel and molybdenum-based catalyst is able to convert CO2 and methane to CO and hydrogen gas, an industrially valuable combination known as synthesis gas. And in 2022, Matthew Kanan, a chemist at Stanford University and his colleagues reported in Cell Reports Physical Science that potassium and sodium carbonate catalysts efficiently convert CO2 and hydrogen gas to CO, a reaction more directly related to the new molybdenum catalyst. ...
Taken together, these CO2 conversion catalysts offer real hope for creating a circular economy where fuels critical for society are generated from atmospheric CO2 ..."

From the editor's summary and abstract:

"Editor’s summary

A cubic phase of molybdenum carbide (α-Mo2C) can convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide (CO) at 100% conversion at 600°C. Although other phases of α-Mo2C have been used for this reverse water gas shift reaction, Ahmadi Khoshooei et al. describe a scalable synthesis of phase-pure α-Mo2C that is both highly active and highly stable. It maintains its activity for more than 500 hours under the high-temperature and high-throughput reaction conditions needed to make this endothermic reaction industrially scalable. The authors attribute the high activity in part to weak CO interactions with the surface and the presence of interstitial oxygen atoms. ...

Abstract

Although technologically promising, the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) to produce carbon monoxide (CO) remains economically challenging owing to the lack of an inexpensive, active, highly selective, and stable catalyst. We show that nanocrystalline cubic molybdenum carbide (α-Mo2C), prepared through a facile and scalable route, offers 100% selectivity for CO2 reduction to CO while maintaining its initial equilibrium conversion at high space velocity after more than 500 hours of exposure to harsh reaction conditions at 600°C. The combination of operando and postreaction characterization of the catalyst revealed that its high activity, selectivity, and stability are attributable to crystallographic phase purity, weak CO-Mo2C interactions, and interstitial oxygen atoms, respectively. Mechanistic studies and density functional theory (DFT) calculations provided evidence that the reaction proceeds through an H2-aided redox mechanism."

Cheap catalyst could help turn carbon dioxide into fuels | Science | AAAS Molybdenum compound offers an efficient way to make carbon monoxide—a building block of chemicals and fuels

An active, stable cubic molybdenum carbide catalyst for the high-temperature reverse water-gas shift reaction (no public access)