Sustainable production of light olefins from greenhouse gas CO2 over SAPO-34 supported modified cerium oxide

Abstract The direct supply of light olefins from CO2 hydrogenation has led to a tremendous interest in its important roles in reducing CO2 emissions. We study here a significantly effective, reliable and multifunctional catalyst, NiCu/CeO2-SAPO-34, capable of directly converting CO2 to light olefins with selectivity up to 76.6% (C2H4 = 22.7%, C3H6 = 35.5%, and C4H8 = 18.4%), while only 2.1% CH4 with CO2 conversion of 15.3% at H2/CO2 of 3, 12 L.gcat-1 h-1, 375 °C and 20 bar. Under optimum reaction conditions, the CO selectivity is lower than 65%. Physiochemical characterization of the catalyst was performed using BET, NH3-TPD, H2-TPR, XRD, TEM, and SEM techniques. Compared to the XRD patterns of SAPO-34 and NiCu/CeO2, the composite showed all characteristic XRD peaks of both samples. In addition, our designed hybrid catalyst also has beneficial catalytic stability, which can operate for 90 hours without loss of apparent activity.