Triethylamine-water as a switchable solvent for the synthesis of Cu/ZnO catalysts for carbon dioxide hydrogenation to methanol

Wallace, William T., Hayward, James S., Ho, Chen-Yu, Marsh, Amy R., Tariq, Anisa and Bartley, Jonathan K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4640-541X 2021. Triethylamine-water as a switchable solvent for the synthesis of Cu/ZnO catalysts for carbon dioxide hydrogenation to methanol. Topics in Catalysis 64 , pp. 984-991. 10.1007/s11244-021-01457-6

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Abstract

Cu/ZnO catalyst precursors for industrial methanol synthesis catalysts are traditionally synthesised by coprecipitation. In this study, a new precipitation route has been investigated based on anti-solvent precipitation using a switchable solvent system of triethylamine and water. This system forms a biphasic system under a nitrogen atmosphere and can be switched to an ionic liquid single phase under a carbon dioxide atmosphere. When metal nitrate solutions were precipitated from water using triethylamine–water as the anti-solvent a hydroxynitrate phase, gerhardite, was formed, rather than the hydroxycarbonate, malachite, formed by coprecipitation. When calcined and reduced, the gerhardite precursors formed Cu/ZnO catalysts which showed better productivity for methanol synthesis from CO2 hydrogenation than a traditional malachite precursor, despite their larger CuO crystallite size determined by X-ray diffraction. The solvents could be recovered by switching to the biphasic system after precipitation, to allow solvent recycling in the process, reducing waste associated with the catalyst synthesis.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Chemistry Cardiff Catalysis Institute (CCI)
Additional Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher:	Springer
ISSN:	1022-5528
Funders:	EPSRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	21 June 2021
Date of Acceptance:	18 May 2021
Last Modified:	10 Jun 2023 16:16
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/142027

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