Construction of a gold-cobalt alloy catalyst to enhance the green reduction of carbon dioxide

Abstract

Facilitating carbon neutrality to mitigate the greenhouse effect by an efficient means has great environmental and social value. In this research, the Au-Co catalyst is synthesized with a developed non-aqueous solvent strategy. By tuning the ratio of the bimetallic composition, it represents a prominent catalytic activity in the reduction of CO2 with benzyl alcohol as the hydrogen donor. By means of the anaerobic oxidation of benzyl alcohol, CO2 can be reduced to methanol as well as methyl benzoate as the main product with a high turnover frequency (1079 h−1) at 220 °C. Taking advantage of a series of characterizations and DFT calculation, it is revealed that the catalytic system constructed in this research promotes the adsorption and activation of CO2. These results demonstrate a feasible route to develop hydrogen-free utilization of CO2 to achieve environmental carbon neutrality in the future.