Bimetal Catalyst Makes Methanol From Low-Pressure Carbon Dioxide

If methanol could be made where and when it’s needed by reacting CO₂ with hydrogen obtained from sun-driven water splitting, the simple alcohol could serve as a low-cost sustainable fuel and chemical feedstock. That possibility may be closer to reality by the discovery of a nickel-gallium methanol synthesis catalyst that works well under mild conditions (Nat. Chem. 2014, DOI: 10.1038/nchem.1873). Methanol is currently made in large industrial facilities from a mixture of CO, CO₂, and petroleum-derived hydrogen. The commercial process is typically driven by a Cu/ZnO catalyst at high pressure. Altering the conditions reduces the methanol yield and can lead to a high concentration of unwanted CO. By using a computational technique, a team led by Jens K. Nørskov of Stanford University and Ib Chorkendorff of the Technical University of Denmark identified a family of Ni-Ga alloys with promising catalytic properties. They synthesized and tested several of the materials and report that Ni₅Ga₃ converts CO₂ and hydrogen to methanol at atmospheric pressure as well as or better than Cu/ZnO and produces lower levels of CO.