Emerging green chemical technologies for the conversion of CH4 to value added products

Climate change is a serious global concern in contemporary times, as the repercussions of this phenomenon occur conspicuously across the globe. Abatement of potential greenhouse gas (GHG) should be a simple and easy measure to counter the global warming. Instead, a lot of research emphasis has been put on various green technologies, through which the undesirable GHG components like methane can be converted into value added by-products. The recent promising discoveries of several methane capturing technologies at sources and of enhancing its high calorific value have surely laid a new pathway for its treatment/utilization. Here, in this review we carried out a thorough survey on many importantly emerging green technological options and their effectiveness as control measures. To this end, we explored the basic characteristics of many relevant technologies including catalytic, plasma, supercritical water, photocatalysis, membrane, solar splitting, and other relevant technologies. All of these options are surely feasible enough to process methane on one hand and to yield variety of useful chemicals as byproduct (e.g., hydrogen, methanol, formaldehyde, and aromatics) on the other hand. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.