Tuning the catalytic active sites of TiO2/CeO2 interactions to improve oxygen vacancy and lattice parameters for CO2 conversion to green fuel additive

Abstract

In recent years, the conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) to value-added products has become an area of great interest, both from an industrial and environmental perspective. Here we have successfully synthesized TiO2/CeO2-based catalysts by exo- and endo-template and use for direct conversion of CO2 to dimethyl carbonate (DMC). It was found that the catalytic activity of TiO2/CeO2 catalysts depends on the acidic and basic sites present in the catalyst. The study also investigated the optimization of reaction conditions in a batch reactor. It was found that the catalytic activity of TiO2/CeO2-based catalysts significantly enhances the CO2 conversion and achieves a high DMC yield compared to the performance of pure CeO2 and TiO2. The reusability of the TiO2/CeO2 catalysts was examined as well. Additionally, the heat of the reaction and Gibbs free energy were calculated using chemical equilibrium models. The experimental response data was validated using artificial neural networks (ANN). The R2 values between the expected and experimental results for DMC yield and CO2 conversion were 0.9953 and 0.9969, respectively. The developed ANN model successfully predicts the percentage of CO2 conversion and DMC yield under the given reaction conditions, with prediction accuracy MSE of 0.0013 and 0.0008, respectively.