Direct conversion of CO and H₂O into liquid fuels under mild conditions

Although enormous progress has been made in C₁ chemistry and CO₂ conversion in recent years, it is still a challenge to develop new carbon resource transformation protocols especially those lead to the production of liquid fuels with high selectivity under mild conditions (e.g., under low temperature and using benign solvent). Herein, we present a novel and energy-efficient catalytic route to directly transform CO and H₂O to liquid fuels (i.e., liquid hydrocarbons) at low temperature (≤200 °C) in aqueous phase (i.e., in a benign solvent), in which H₂O served as both hydrogen source and solvent for the liquid fuel production. The key to the catalytic process is the construction of a highly efficient tandem catalyst Pt-Mo₂C/C + Ru/C, which can directly convert CO and H₂O in aqueous phase to liquid hydrocarbons with a production rate of 8.7 mol_-CH2- mol_Ru^-1 h^-1 and selectivity up to 68.4% of C₅₊ hydrocarbons at 200 °C.