Boosting CO<sub>2</sub> Hydrogenation to Methanol via Enriching the Cu─ZnO Interface on Layered Double Oxides
Changwei Chen, Mohammadreza Kosari, Zeyu Jiang, Shibo Xi, Lianghui Xia, Yuying Shao, Chi He, Hua Chun Zeng
Abstract
Abstract The controlled creation, selective exposure, and activation of more Cu─ZnO interface while simultaneously minimizing copper usage are crucial for accelerating methanol synthesis from CO 2 hydrogenation over Cu─ZnO‐Al 2 O 3 catalysts. Employing layered double oxides (LDO) as the support with intrinsically structured ZnAl, herein, an efficient triphasic catalyst bearing extrinsically deposited ultrafine Cu nanoparticles derived from metal–organic framework (MOF), manifesting a rich Cu─ZnO interface when compared to identically synthesized counterparts with limited and regular interfaces is presented. The resulting 2D catalyst with the maximized interface between Cu crystallites and LDO gallery (C/ZALDO) dramatically raises the rate of CO 2 hydrogenation to methanol with a remarkable methanol space‐time yield of 1612 g MeOH ·kg Cu −1 ·h −1 at 260 °C and 30 bar. Ex situ characterizations and in situ spectroscopy results confirm that methanol is produced from the hydrogenation of carbon monoxide (CO*) intermediate (via RWGS+CO‐hydro pathway) which is stably adsorbed on the Cu─ZnO interface.