Runping Ye
Xusheng Wang
Gang Wang
Yanping Chen
Qinghua Lai5
Riguang Zhang- 1Key Laboratory of Jiangxi Province for Environment and Energy Catalysis, Institute of Applied Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanchang University, Nanchang, China
- 2Institute of Functional Porous Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, China
- 3Institute for Catalysis, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
- 4State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, China
- 5College of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, United States
- 6State Key Laboratory of Clean and Efficient Coal Utilization, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan, China
Editorial on the Research Topic
Heterogeneous catalysts for C1 molecules conversion
Introduction
One-carbon (C1) chemistry is a sustainable, environmentally friendly reaction step for the synthesis of chemicals and fuels, thus it has been an effective approach to solving the depletion of fossil fuels. Specifically, C1 chemistry refers to the synthetic chemistry from the conversion of original compounds with one carbon atom, such as CO, CO2, CH4, HCHO, HCOOH, and CH3OH. The heterogeneous catalysts have been employed for C1 chemistry because of their high conversion efficiency and facile recycling. This editorial work mainly introduces C1 molecules conversion by different catalytic approaches such as electro-, photo-, and thermo-catalytic process.
The key to C1 molecules conversion is to design robust catalysts. A series of conventional thermal catalysts have been constructed and reported for C1 molecules conversion to fuels and chemicals (Jin Z. et al., 2020; Parastaev A. et al., 2022; Rabelo-Neto R. C. et al., 2022). For the sustainable development to produce energy especially hydrogen energy, ethanol, gasoline, and starch, more and more photo-, electro, plasma-, bio-catalysts have been designed for the green conversion of C1 molecules. We have provided a perspective on CO2 hydrogenation to C2+ products by two typical routes over heterogeneous catalysts (Ye R. P. et al., 2019). As an example, 410 mg/(L·h) of starch could be artificially synthesized within 4 h through 11 core reaction steps from CO2 under the combination of thermo- and bio-catalysts (Cai T. et al., 2021). Sonali et al. have also summarized the progress of core-shell structured materials for thermo-, photo, and electro-catalytic conversion of CO2 (Das S. et al., 2020). Numerous papers have reported on this Research Topic and the representative advances will be introduced in the next section.
Significant advances in this Research Topic
Herein we would introduce advances in the collected papers on this Research Topic. Climate change is a global problem and researchers have focused on investigating CO2 conversion. However, it is still difficult to develop a robust catalyst for CO2 conversion due to its high stability. Compared with traditional oxide-supported catalysts, perovskite-type mixed oxides-based catalysts have attracted more and more attention due to their high CO2 activation performance. Wu et al. have provided a review that focuses on emerging perovskite-type mixed oxides–based catalysts for CO2 conversion. Three typical transformation reactions of CO2 to high-value products on perovskite catalysts have been commented on. The related reaction mechanisms and the reasons for catalyst deactivation were analyzed in detail. Then three strategies were proposed to improve their catalytic performance, including increasing oxygen vacancies, enhancing the active metal dispersion, and tuning the strong metal-support interactions. The specific modified methods were also discussed, including optimizing preparation conditions, adding various additives, introducing appropriate metal substitution and re-loading to other oxide supports, and so on. Finally, future research in this field was provided, aiming to pave the way for net-carbon emission in modern society through sustainable development and efficient utilization of CO2.
To relieve the problem of easily sintering and coking of catalysts for dry reforming of CO2/CH4, Chen et al. investigated the structure and catalytic performance of Ni/SiO2 catalysts prepared by three different preparation methods, and pointed out that the Ni/SiO2-AE catalyst prepared by ammonia evaporation (AE) method achieved superior catalytic performance than other two preparation methods. This is mainly because that the Ni/SiO2-AE catalyst has smaller Ni nanoparticles, strong interaction between metal and supports, as well as abundant Ni-O-Si units. These factors improve its activity and sintering resistance ability. In addition, the Ni-O-Si units as the active sites decomposed methane into CHx*, avoiding the direct generation of C* and thus greatly enhancing the catalyst carbon resistance. The Ni/SiO2-AE catalyst showed good resistance to sintering and carbon deposition during the stability test for 210 h. However, the uneven distribution of nickel species and the large size of Ni nanoparticles in the catalyst prepared by the impregnation method led to poor catalytic performance. The Ni species distribution on the catalysts prepared by the sol-gel method was uniform, but Ni nanoparticles were coated by the silica network, then the effective exposed active sites were reduced, resulting in poor catalyst activity. Therefore, this nice work highlights the influence of the synthetic method on the catalytic properties for C1 molecules conversion.
In addition to CO2 conversion, hydrogen production and utilization is another important topic for C1 molecules conversion. Hong et al. have prepared an efficient FeNiOOH/NF (NF = nickel foam) electrocatalyst with hierarchical nanostructures for hydrogen production from water splitting. The hydrogen could also be produced from methanol and formic acid as liquid hydrogen storage carriers due to their stable properties for transportation. The produced hydrogen could be used for CO/CO2 hydrogenation to other chemicals like ethanol and gasoline. Thus, the on-site hydrogen production and further hydrogenation reactions are more and more important. Last but not at least, (Yang et al.) have used the metal-organic frameworks as a template to prepare an Ag/ZnO@N-carbon catalyst with superior photocatalytic activity for degradation of RhB, converting 98.65% of RhB after 25 min irradiation. Similarly, the photocatalytic conversion of C1 molecules is also important due to its mild reaction condition.
Summary and outlook
Nowadays, more and more significant progress through the different catalytic systems has been made for C1 molecules conversion, especially the photo- and electro-catalytic systems for CO2/CH4 conversion under mild reaction conditions. However, there are still many bottleneck problems to be solved. For example, the severe reaction conditions and related huge energy consumption for thermos-catalytic C1 molecules conversion. However, scaling up and industrialization applications for these emerging photo- and electro-catalysts is still challenging. Although the photo- and electro-catalytic systems are greener and more sustainable, their conversion efficiency is relatively low, and corresponding industrial application is still slow. The development of robust catalysts and advanced equipment would be important to this research field. Moreover, we think the future development direction is the precise design of catalysts with the aid of artificial intelligence under a deep understanding of potential reaction mechanisms. In addition, the dynamic or real structure of catalysts under the reaction conditions should also be revealed with more operando characterization technologies. The study on the C1 chemistry would bring more and more green chemicals and fuels in the future.
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Author contributions
RY wrote the original draft, and all the listed authors have reviewed, discussed, and approved it for publication.
Funding
This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing, China (No. CSTB2022NSCQ-MSX0231), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22005296), and Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholar of Shanxi Province (No. 20210302121005).
Acknowledgments
We greatly thank the authors and referees joined in this Research Topic. We also thank Tomas Ramirez Reina, the Specialty Chief Editor of Frontiers in Chemistry, for the guidance and help during this Research Topic.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
References
Cai, T., Sun, H., Qiao, J., Zhu, L., Zhang, F., Zhang, J., et al. (2021). Cell-free chemoenzymatic starch synthesis from carbon dioxide. Science 373, 1523–1527. doi:10.1126/science.abh4049
Das, S., Pérez-Ramírez, J., Gong, J., Dewangan, N., Hidajat, K., Gates, B. C., et al. (2020). Core-shell structured catalysts for thermocatalytic, photocatalytic, and electrocatalytic conversion of CO2. Chem. Soc. Rev. 49, 2937–3004. doi:10.1039/C9CS00713J
Jin, Z., Wang, L., Zuidema, E., Mondal, K., Zhang, M., Zhang, J., et al. (2020). Hydrophobic zeolite modification for insitu peroxide formation in methaneoxidation to methanol. Science 367, 193–197. doi:10.1126/science.aaw1108
Parastaev, A., Muravev, V., Osta, E. H., Kimpel, T. F., Simons, J. F. M., van Hoof, A. J. F., et al. (2022). Breaking structure sensitivity in CO2 hydrogenation by tuning metal–oxide interfaces in supported cobalt nanoparticles. Nat. Catal. 5, 1051–1060. doi:10.1038/s41929-022-00874-4
Rabelo-Neto, R. C., Almeida, M. P., Silveira, E. B., Ayala, M., Watson, C. D., Villarreal, J., et al. (2022). CO2 hydrogenation: Selectivity control of CO versus CH4 achieved using Na doping over Ru/m-ZrO2 at low pressure. Appl. Catal. B Environ. 315, 121533. doi:10.1016/j.apcatb.2022.121533
Keywords: heterogeneous catalysis, C1 molecules conversion, advances and perspective, carbon dioxide, hydrogen
Citation: Ye R, Wang X, Wang G, Chen Y, Lai Q and Zhang R (2023) Editorial: Heterogeneous catalysts for C1 molecules conversion. Front. Chem. 10:1121871. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2022.1121871
Received: 12 December 2022; Accepted: 26 December 2022;
Published: 11 January 2023.
Edited by:
Nader Ghaffari Khaligh, University of Malaya, MalaysiaReviewed by:
Salam Titinchi, University of the Western Cape, South AfricaCopyright © 2023 Ye, Wang, Wang, Chen, Lai and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Runping Ye, rye@ncu.edu.cn