Abstract
As the world pledges to significantly cut carbon emissions, the demand for sustainable and clean energy has now become more important than ever. This includes both production and storage of energy carriers, a majority of which involve catalytic reactions. This article reviews recent developments of homogeneous catalysts in emerging applications of sustainable energy. The most important focus has been on hydrogen storage as several efficient homogeneous catalysts have been reported recently for (de)hydrogenative transformations promising to the hydrogen economy. Another direction that has been extensively covered in this review is that of the methanol economy. Homogeneous catalysts investigated for the production of methanol from CO2, CO, and HCOOH have been discussed in detail. Moreover, catalytic processes for the production of conventional fuels (higher alkanes such as diesel, wax) from biomass or lower alkanes have also been discussed. A section has also been dedicated to the production of ethylene glycol from CO and H2 using homogeneous catalysts. Well-defined transition metal complexes, in particular, pincer complexes, have been discussed in more detail due to their high activity and well-studied mechanisms.
Highlights
Energy lies at the core of a nation’s economy, and for the past two centuries, the amount of the energy consumption of society has increased in lockstep with the amount of wealth created
As we review a plethora of homogeneous catalysts for the production and storage of energy carriers, we present a general overview of their mechanism of operation
Reviews on various perspectives of liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHCs), e.g., chemical and economic properties or supply chain strategies, have been reported earlier.[176−182] Here, we focus on the recent developments in LOHCs facilitated by homogeneous transition metal catalysts
Summary
Energy lies at the core of a nation’s economy, and for the past two centuries, the amount of the energy consumption of society has increased in lockstep with the amount of wealth created. Considering that the production and release of CO2 in the atmosphere is inevitable, its capture and transformation to methanol in a cost-effective manner is perhaps the most sustainable approach to produce renewable methanol This area has been extensively studied using organometallic catalysts where CO2 can be trapped using capturing agents such as alcohols, amines, silanes, and boranes followed by its hydrogenation or hydrolysis to produce methanol. Its transformation to produce higher hydrocarbons (e.g., C8−C19) can allow us to attain a sustainable energy-based economy without a need to change our infrastructure to accommodate a new energy source This is important for aviation fuels, where density requirements and stringent specifications dictate that jet fuel (C8−C16 hydrocarbons) will be the industry norm in the near future.[68] The area of alkane upgradation has made slow progress in the past couple of decades due to the inertness and inactivity of alkane C−H bonds. A summary and perspective on the current challenges and prospects of the reviewed areas have been described (section 7)
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