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Updated: Sep 24, 2025

Achieving Moderate Pressures in Sealed Vessels Using Dry Ice As a Solid CO2 Source
Published on: August 17, 2018
Ambient-pressure hydrogenation of CO2 into long-chain olefins
Zhongling Li1, Wenlong Wu1, Menglin Wang1
1Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Key Laboratory of Surface and Interface Chemistry and Energy Catalysis of Anhui Higher Education Institutes, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, PR China.
Abstract:
The conversion of CO2 by renewable power-generated hydrogen is a promising approach to a sustainable production of long-chain olefins (C4+=) which are currently produced from petroleum resources. The decentralized small-scale electrolysis for hydrogen generation requires the operation of CO2 hydrogenation in ambient-pressure units to match the manufacturing scales and flexible on-demand production. Herein, we report a Cu-Fe catalyst which is operated under ambient pressure with comparable C4+= selectivity (66.9%) to that of the state-of-the-art catalysts (66.8%) optimized under high pressure (35 bar). The catalyst is composed of copper, iron oxides, and iron carbides. Iron oxides enable reverse-water-gas-shift to produce CO. The synergy of carbide path over iron carbides and CO insertion path over interfacial sites between copper and iron carbides leads to efficient C-C coupling into C4+=. This work contributes to the development of small-scale low-pressure devices for CO2 hydrogenation compatible with sustainable hydrogen production.
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