Methanation of carbon dioxide: an overview

Although being very challenging, utilization of carbon dioxide (CO2) originating from production processes and flue gases of CO2-intensive sectors has a great environmental and industrial potential due to improving the resource efficiency of industry as well as by contributing to the reduction of CO2 emissions. As a renewable and environmentally friendly source of carbon, catalytic approaches for CO2 fixation in the synthesis of chemicals offer the way to mitigate the increasing CO2 buildup. Among the catalytic reactions, methanation of CO2 is a particularly promising technique for producing energy carrier or chemical. This article focuses on recent developments in catalytic materials, novel reactors, and reaction mechanism for methanation of CO2.