Photothermal catalysis for CO2 convert into C1–C3 hydrocarbons by proton conductor BZCY532

Abstract

Conversion of CO _2 into long-chain hydrocarbons is a potential applications in clean energy research. Here, we exhibit an efficient, stable and readily synthesized photocatalyst for the photocatalytic reduction of CO _2 . This is the first time that the proton conductor BZCY 532 as photocatalysts can harvest UV light for multielectron, multiproton reduction of CO _2 to C _1 (methane) , C _2 (ethane), and C _3 (propane) hydrocarbons. Under the photothermal coupling (350 °C + UV) condition, the total yield of CH _4 , C _2 H _6 and C _3 H _8 were 39.13 umol g ^−1 , 8.64 umol g ^−1 and 3.22 umol g ^−1 over the course of more than 5 h runs, respectively . The light and temperature attribute influence the selectivity of C _1 and C _2 , C _3 . In this approach, Ni, Co-doped BZCY532 were also studied and the results show that Ni, Co-doped BZCY532 have higher activity. Ni _0.05 and Co _0.05 obtained the yield of total CH _4 , C _2 H _6 , C _3 H _8 , which show about 5.6, 9.6, 3.9 and 6.8, 14.2, 6.7 times than BZCY532, respectively. The results proved that doping play a crucial role in improving photocatalytic activity of BZCY532. The formation of multi-carbon compounds maybe the faster proton transfer, which can harvest more electrons from the proton conductor catalysts and promote C–C coupling to form C _2 and C _3 . These findings elucidate BZCY-based proton conductor catalyst can be good candidate for the nature of photocatalysis, which involves the stage for the chemical bond formation by light excitation.

Keywords

• proton conductor photocatalysis
• BZCY532
• photothermal catalysis
• long-chain hydrocarbons