Recently, Assoc. Researcher Zhu Xianglin and Prof. Xu Hui and their group published the latest research work titled Supercharged CO2 Photothermal catalytic Methanation: High Conversion, Rate, and Selectivity in the journal of Angewandte Chemie International Edition (DOI: 10.1002/anie.202218694). Jiangsu University (JSU) is the first completing unit of this work., and Assoc. Researcher Zhu Xianglin is the first author.

In the face of serious climate challenges caused by the excessive CO2 emission, it has become a global consensus to promote large-scale CO2 capture and conversion. Using CO2 as a feedstock to produce high-value chemicals such as methane, syngas and other hydrocarbons is closely related to achieving carbon neutrality. In recent years, the CO2 hydrogenation process represented by the Sabatier reaction has attracted extensive attention from researchers. However, due to the thermodynamic and kinetic bottlenecks of the Sabatier CO2 methanation reaction, the reaction is usually carried out at a high temperature in order to obtain the conversion, rate and selectivity that are feasible in industry. In this paper, Ni metal-modified boron nitride photothermal catalysts are reported for photothermal CO2 methanation. The adsorption and activation of CO2 molecules can be achieved by the in-situ generated HOB B Frustrated Lewis acid-base pairs. Thus, 87.68% CO2 conversion and 2.03 mol g-1h-1 product generation efficiency can be achieved under atmospheric pressure, and the selectivity are close to 100%. This work provides an important reference for the design of efficient light-driven Sabatier reaction catalysts.

In recent years, the Institute for Energy Research of JSU has closely followed the national carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals and focused on the frontier research fields of CO2 photocatalytic, electric and thermal conversion. It has got more than 10 key projects and general projects approved by National Natural Science Foundation. It has established and deepened international cooperation with well-known universities such as the University of Toronto and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and published more than 100 high-quality papers, which has exerted a certain influence among its domestic counterparts.