Journal
NATURE CHEMISTRY
Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 320-324Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/NCHEM.1873
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Funding
- US Department of Energy
- Danish National Research Foundation's Centre for Individual Nanoparticle Functionality [DNRF54]
- Catalysis for Sustainable Energy initiative
- Danish Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation
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The use of methanol as a fuel and chemical feedstock could become very important in the development of a more sustainable society if methanol could be efficiently obtained from the direct reduction of CO2 using solar-generated hydrogen. If hydrogen production is to be decentralized, small-scale CO2 reduction devices are required that operate at low pressures. Here, we report the discovery of a Ni-Ga catalyst that reduces CO2 to methanol at ambient pressure. The catalyst was identified through a descriptor-based analysis of the process and the use of computational methods to identify Ni-Ga intermetallic compounds as stable candidates with good activity. We synthesized and tested a series of catalysts and found that Ni5Ga3 is particularly active and selective. Comparison with conventional Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalysts revealed the same or better methanol synthesis activity, as well as considerably lower production of CO. We suggest that this is a first step towards the development of small-scale low-pressure devices for CO2 reduction to methanol.
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