Recent Advances in Catalysts for Methanol Synthesis from syngas

摘要

Methanol is a basic chemical feedstock for many important chemicals such as acetic acid, methyl tert-butyl ether(MTBE), formaldehyde, dimethyl ether(DME), methylamine, and chloromethane. With the rapid development in modern industry, the energy and environmental issues have become two important concerns in 21th century. As a clean liquid fuel, methanol could provide convenient storage of energy for fuel cell applications, and it is a cleaner energy compared with most other sources. For these reasons, methanol synthesis is attracting more and more interest in the world. The catalyst for the methanol synthesis has been a key area of research in order to optimize the reaction process because of its importance in chemical industries and its potential as an environmentally friendly energy carrier. At present the key to methanol synthesis is to develop the most efficient catalyst. As we all know, the copper catalysts were improved to be one of the efficient catalysts using in methanol synthesis, so many researchers are engaged in the valence state of active sites in methanol synthesis from hydrogenation of CO or CO2, reaction mechanism, catalyst performance and copper catalyst preparation using different catalyst compositions and preparation methods, such as using different supports, promoters, and coprecipitation methods. In addition, new catalysts based on Pd, Pt, Ni, and alloys have also been reported in the literature.