Photocatalytic Conversion of Carbon Dioxide To Fuel

Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a harmful greenhouse gas that is being increased in the atmosphere. As CO2 emissions build up in the atmosphere, it tends to warm the climate leading to many adverse changes in atmosphere and thus causes various irreparable damages on our environment. This critical juncture compelled researchers to work upon converting this emitted CO2 into fuel like methanol, butanol or even gasoline which can reduce the emission of GHG in the atmosphere. Photocatalytic approach to convert CO2 into methanol in the presence of TiO2, a photocatalyst has been very promising till date and discussed in this work. TiO2. TiO2 synthesis was done by two routes, hydrolysis and sol-gel. In hydrolysis method, various concentration from 1 mol.dm-3 to 3 mol.dm-3 and volume from 50 ml to 200 ml. Anatase phase increased with the increase in volume. The same was the trend in increase of photoluminescence. Sol-gel proved to be a better photocatalyst with a lower size range of 40-60 nm than hydrolysis method that range from 40-90 nm. The photo reduction of CO2 with H2O was efficaciously demonstrated in a laboratory scale photoreactor with TiO2 and TiO2-Nb catalysts. The maximum methanol yield amongst all the catalysts was 0.15 μgm/ml by using TiO2(sol-gel) under UV irradiation. Compared with other catalysts proved to be a better photocatalyst. Doping had no positive impact on photo reduction of CO2to methanol. All in all, asuccessful demonstration of material synthesis and its application in photo reduction of CO2 was achieved.