The catalytic reduction of CO2 to methanol is an appealing option to reduce greenhouse gas concentration as well as renewable energy production. In addition, the exhaustion of fossil fuel, increase in earth temperature and sharp increases in fuel prices are the main driving factor for exploring the synthesis of methanol by hydrogenating CO2. Many studies on the catalytic hydrogenation of CO2 to methanol were published in the literature over the last few decades. Many of the studies have presented different catalysts having high stability, higher performance, low cost, and are immediately required to promote conversion. Understanding the mechanisms involved in the conversion of CO2 is essential as the first step towards creating these catalysts. This review briefly summarizes recent theoretical developments in mechanistic studies focused on using density functional theory, kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, and microkinetics modeling. Based on these simulation techniques on different transition metals, metal/metal oxide, and other heterogeneous catalysts surfaces, mainly, three important mechanisms that have been recommended are the formate (HCOO), reverse water–gas shift (RWGS), and trans-COOH mechanisms. Recent experimental and theoretical efforts appear to demonstrate that the formate route in which the main intermediate species is H2CO* in the reaction route, is more favorable in catalytic hydrogenation of CO2 to chemical fuels in various temperature and pressure conditions.

The visible-light response is a necessary condition for titanium dioxide (TiO2) photocatalyst to function as a visible light active photocatalyst. This condition can be solved by investigation of the bandgaps and the optimization of doping levels of multivalency metal-doped TiO2. In this study, pure and Cu, Fe, and Ni-doped TiO2 photocatalysts were prepared by the sol‐gel method. The photocatalysts were characterized using XRD, FTIR, FESEM, EDX, N2 physisorption, and UV‐Vis spectrophotometry techniques. The XRD patterns of all pure TiO2 and Cu/TiO2, Fe/TiO2, and Ni/TiO2samples showed the dominant structure of the anatase TiO2 phase. The presence of functional groups at the interface of TiO2 particles was showed by FTIR. The FESEM analysis showed that the particle size of the prepared samples was uniform with spherical morphology. EDX results showed that TiO2 has successfully incorporated Cu, Fe, and Ni metals onto its surface. The BET analysis showed that the specific surface area of the doped samples increased with the amount of doping. The optical properties of all samples were carried out using UV-DRS measurements and their obtained bandgap energies were in the range of 3.22 - 3.42 eV. The pure TiO2 displayed more than 98% and 97% decolorization rates for MB solution at the end of irradiation time of 5 h under UV and visible light, respectively. Among the doped samples, 3 mol% Ni/TiO2 and Cu/TiO2 demonstrated the highest photocatalytic activity (97.65%) under UV light and 6 mol% Ni/TiO2 under visible light for MB (96.86%) decolorization.