Power to methanol technologies via CO2 recovery: CO2 hydrogenation and electrocatalytic routes

Various strategies are proposed to date in order to convert CO2 to large diversity of useful chemicals. The following review discusses two important approaches that produce methanol from CO2. These two includes CO2 hydrogenation and electrocatalytic routes. These processes could recycle CO2, permitting a carbon neutral, closed loop of fuel combustion and CO2 reduction to prevent a rising concentration of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Besides, intermittent electricity generation can be stored in an energy-dense, portable form in chemical bonds. The present review reports more recent findings and drawbacks of these two processes. The present review study revealed that the hydrogenation process could become readily operational in comparison to electrocatalytic process. The electrocatalytic approach still has serious technical issues in terms of kinetically sluggish multi-electron transfer process during CO2 reduction reaction that requires excessive over-potential, relatively poor selectivity, poor durability in the long term, and the absence of the optimized standard experimental and commercial systems.