The capture and utilization of CO2 has received much attention due to global warming caused by the positive carbon accumulation in the atmosphere. Despite being a rather inert molecule, CO2 may be activated and converted into useful compounds and fuels via several different processes. The reverse water-gas shift (RWGS) reaction, which occurs when CO2 and H2 are combined to form CO and H2O, has been identified as one of the most promising methods for utilizing CO2 [1-3]. The produced CO is subsequently processed through the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reaction to produce various chemical compounds with greater added values, such as acid, alcohol, formaldehyde, and olefins. In this study, wet impregnation (WI) was employed to create Cu-ZrO2 catalysts with different copper contents (0.5- 5wt.%) that were then used in the RWGS process in a temperature range of 100 to 600 oC under atmospheric pressure. The catalysts were characterized using different analyses such as XRD, CHN, TPR, TEM, and SEM/EDX. The findings demonstrate that a 2% Cu-ZrO2 catalyst produces highly distributed CuO through interactions with ZrO2, and the catalyst exhibits high RWGS catalytic performance in terms of activity and low carbon deposition (&lt;1%). However, CuO with bigger particle size is generated in catalysts with high Cu loading amounts (5%), which results in enhanced carbon deposition and byproduct formation throughout the process. For all cases, the conversion increased as the temperature increased, reaching a maximum conversion of around 51% at 600 oC for the sample containing 2 wt% copper.

Reverse water–gas shift reaction over Cu–ZrO2 catalysts for CO2 conversion to CO

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