In order to keep the global temperature increase due to climate change below 2 °C, immediate actions must be taken to drastically reduce the amount of released greenhouse gases. This task can be achieved by improving the efficiency of industrial processes, by carbon capture and storage at large scale, and, additionally, by the de-fossilisation of industry and transport via capture and utilisation of biogenic CO2. Furthermore, fossil fuel depletion and policies that penalise carbon emissions motivate the realisation of catalytic conversion of CO2 into value-added products (e.g. olefins, dimethylether, acetic acid or methanol). Thus, CO2 is no longer considered a toxic waste, but an important raw material and valuable C1 building block. This enables the development of efficient circular economy concepts that allow the processing of large quantities of CO2 in a short time.
CO2 recycling is a technological challenge due to the stability of the molecule (dissociation energy: 750 kJ mol−1). It requires significant energy input, which is often realised by very high reaction temperatures (limiting suitable competitive processes). Hence, CO2 valorisation requires the development of new concepts and new perspectives for catalysis, including process engineering.
An effective process for large scale CO2 utilisation is the catalytic reverse water-gas shift (rWGS) reaction. Furthermore, rWGS is an important intermediate reaction in other CO2 conversion processes and a key reaction for Power-to-X applications. Another major advantage is that rWGS reactors can be implemented easily with the current available infrastructure in heavy carbon industry (e.g. cement, steel making, refineries, etc.), exactly where huge amounts of CO2 are emitted. Syngas produced via rWGS can then be used, for example in Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (synthetic fuels) or for the production of methanol (one of the five most important chemical feedstocks worldwide).
We are developing our perovskite oxide catalysts as novel high-performance RWGS catalysts. For this we transforming it from a lab based powder material to a formed catalyst.
