Recycling CO2 into Useful Chemicals

A junior research group lead by Dr Jennifer Strunk at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, is to investigate the photocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide over the next five years, following a 1.18 million Euro research grant from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

The investigations will be conducted in the University’s Laboratory of Industrial Chemistry, headed by Dr. Martin Muhler. The funding originates from a successful application to the Call for Proposals ‘Technologien für Nachhaltigkeit und Klimaschutz – Chemische Prozesse und stoffliche Nutzung von CO2’ (Technologies for Sustainability and Climate Preservation – Chemical Processes and Molecular Conversion of CO2”) of the BMBF

The research team will be aiming to recycle CO2 into important building block chemicals for industrial or fuel applications - for example methane and methanol – just by adding water and shining light on the reaction mixture, instead of using hydrogen and a conventional energyintensive high-pressure process.

This approach would require an appropriate photocatalyst to be added to the reaction mixture and the main focus of the work will be on knowledge-based development and

testing and characterisation of a variety of heterogeneous photocatalysts for the desired chemistry.