Professor Ye Runping Publishes Latest Research about CO2 Hydrogenation in Angewandte Chemie

        (School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering) Recently, Professor Ye Runping, a member in Professor Zhang Rongbin's research team from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Nanchang University, has made significant progress in boosting low-temperature CO2 hydrogenation over Ni-based catalysts by tuning strong metal-support interactions (SMSI), overcoming the bottleneck of low-temperature CO2 methanation. This research, titled “Boosting Low-Temperature CO2 Hydrogenation over Ni-based Catalysts by Tuning Strong Metal-Support Interactions”, has been published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Professor Ye Runping, Professor Ma Lixuan and Professor Hong Xiaoling are co-first authors; Professor Maohong Fan from the University of Wyoming, Professor Zhang Riguang from Taiyuan University of Technology, and Professor Liu Jian from Inner Mongolia University are corresponding authors. Nanchang University is the first affiliation. This work marks another significant achievement in developing new catalysts within the field of industrial catalysis at Nanchang University during the four decades and above.

CO2 methanation, as an effective method to convert CO2 into natural gas, plays an important role in achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. Earlier experiments demonstrated that Ni/monoclinic-ZrO2 catalyst could afford a superior activity for CO2 hydrogenation compared to Ni/cubic- ZrO2 catalyst at low temperatures (below 300°C) (Chem. Eng. J., 2022, 446, 137031). Building on extensive research in CO2 hydrogenation, with the optimized SMSI effect and abundant oxygen vacancies, local electron density of Ni is enhanced, so as to facilitate low-temperature CO2 activation and hydrogenation performance. An optimal Ni/ZrO2 catalyst affords an excellent performance, with a CO2 conversion of 84.0%, CH4 selectivity of 98.6% even at 230°C and GHSV of 12,000 mLg-1h-1 for 106 hours, surpassing most CO2 methanation catalysts. Combined a series of (quasi) in situ spectroscopic characterization, the study reveals the reconstruction of monoclinic-ZrO2 (from c-ZrO2 to m-ZrO2) and the reaction path of format, offering new insights for designing efficient CO2 hydrogenation catalysts.

Professor Ye Runping is dedicated to the design, production, and industrialization of heterogeneous catalysis for hydrogenation (especially rare-earth catalyst), and its fundamental and applied study in the field of environment and energy, laying a critical technological and theoretical foundation for the efficient and clean utilization of coal and the upgrade of CO2 as a resource. As the (co-) first author or corresponding author, he has published over 30 SCI papers in prestigious journals such as Angewandte Chemie, Nature Communications (published 2 papers), ACS Catalysis (published 2 papers), Applied Catalysis B: Environmental (published 2 papers), and Chemical Engineering Journal, with over 2400 citations in Google Scholar and an H-index of 24. He was included in the 2023 Stanford’s List of World Top 2% Scientists; he was an awardee of National Natural Science Foundation of China, Special Funding of China Postdoctoral Foundation, Jiangxi Double Thousand Plan, and Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars at Jiangxi Province; he is a special research assistant at the Chinese Academy of Sciences; he also serves as a youth editorial board member for several journals, including International Journal of Coal Science & Technology, Frontiers in Chemistry, Energy Materials, Low-Carbon Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and Acta Petrolei Sinica (Petroleum Processing Section).

     The link of the paper:

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202317669

Editor: Cheng Huiping

Executive Editor: Tu Jinfeng