Conversion of Carbon Dioxide into Several Potential Chemical Commodities Following Different Pathways - A Review

Abstract

This article reviews the literature related to the direct uses of CO2and its conversion into various value added chemicals including high energy density liquid fuels such as methanol. The increase in the direct uses of CO2and its conversion into potential chemical commodities is very important as it directly contributes to the mitigation of CO2related global warming problem. The method being followed at present in several countries to reduce the CO2associated global warming is capturing of CO2at its major outlets using monoethanolamine based solution absorption technique followed by storing it in safe places such as, oceans, depleted coal seams, etc., (i.e., carbon dioxide capturing and storing in safe places, CCS process). This is called as CO2sequestration. Although, the CCS process is the most understood and immediate option to mitigate the global warming problem, it is considerably expensive and has become a burden for those countries, which are practicing this process. The other alternative and most beneficial way of mitigating this global warming problem is to convert the captured CO2into certain value added bulk chemicals instead of disposing it. Conversion of CO2into methanol has been identified as one of such cost effective ways of mitigating global warming problem. Further, if H2is produced from exclusively water using only solar energy instead of any fossil fuel based energy, and is used to convert CO2into methanol there are three major benefits: i) it contributes greatly to the global warming mitigation problem, ii) it greatly saves fossil fuels as methanol production from CO2could be an excellent sustainable and renewable energy resource, and iii) as on today, there is no better process than this to store energy in a more convenient and highly usable form of high energy density liquid fuel. Not only methanol, several other potential chemicals and value added chemical intermediates can be produced from CO2. In this article, i) synthesis of several commodity chemicals including poly and cyclic-carbonates, sodium carbonate and dimethyl carbonate, carbamates, urea, vicinal diamines, 2-arylsuccinic acids, dimethyl ether, methanol, various hydrocarbons, acetic acid, formaldehyde, formic acid, lower alkanes, etc., from CO2, ii) the several direct uses of CO2, and iii) the importance of producing methanol from CO2using exclusively solar energy are presented, discussed and summarized by citing all the relevant and important references.

Electrochemical reduction of CO2 in an aqueous electrolyte employing an iridium/ruthenium‐oxide electrode

“…One ways of doing this by converting CO 2 into useful/organic molecules. [1,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] Numerous methods have been used for the conversion of CO 2 into useful products, such as chemical, photochemical, electrochemical, and photoelectrochemical. [16,17,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39] Electrochemical reduction of CO 2 is a simple and cost effective method.…”

Design of a Novel Voltage Controller for Conversion of Carbon Dioxide into Clean Fuels Using the Integration of a Vanadium Redox Battery with Solar Energy

“…An advance in the electrochemical reduction of CO2 to hydrocarbons with high rates and efficiencies was seen in [25]; the evaluation recommends that verified technologies and sound, tested principles are made available to develop an integrated energy system relying on clean fuels [26]. Therefore, we design a novel voltage controller to switch the three-loop optimal bias voltage to run the hydrogen production and conversion of carbon dioxide into methane and methanol.…”

“…The electrochemical reduction of CO2 requires electrical energy, with overpotential always >1 V (vs standard hydrogen electrode (SHE) or normal hydrogen electrode (NHE)) to get reasonable amounts of fuels [26,30]. A concept of an integrated energy carrier includes electricity plus hydrogen and synthetic carbon-based fuels.…”

“…Energies 2018, 11, 524 6 of 10 amounts of fuels [26,30]. A concept of an integrated energy carrier includes electricity plus hydrogen and synthetic carbon-based fuels.…”

The Potential for Electrofuels Production in Sweden Utilizing Fossil and Biogenic CO2 Point Sources

“…Interest in electrofuels is on the rise, both in the literature (Graves et al, 2011;Mohseni, 2012;Nikoleris and Nilsson, 2013;Taljegård et al, 2015) 1 and in terms of demonstration plants in the EU, in some cases, including CO2 capture (Gahleitner, 2013). Studies mainly investigate electrofuels as a (i) technology for storing intermittent electricity [e.g., Streibel et al (2013), de Boer et al (2014, Vandewalle et al (2014), König et al (2015), Qadrdan et al (2015), Varone and Ferrari (2015), Zakeri and Syri (2015), Zhang et al (2015), and Kötter et al (2016)], (ii) fuel for transport [e.g., Connolly et al (2014), Ridjan et al (2014), Larsson et al (2015)], or (iii) means of producing chemicals [e.g., Ganesh (2013), Perathoner and Centi (2014), and Chen et al (2016)]. Different types of energy carriers [e.g., methane, methanol, DME (dimethyl ether), gasoline, and diesel] can be produced, which makes electrofuels a potentially interesting option for all transport modes, especially shipping, aviation, and long distance road transport, where the potential for other renewable fuel options, such as electricity and hydrogen, may be limited.…”