(647g) CO2 Chemical Transformation to Valuable Commodities: Toward a Utopia for Fossil-Fuel-Based Economies

Energy and environment have been always classified as the top human challenges by mid-century. In the contemporary fossil-fuel-based civilizations up to 90% of the energy needs are supplied by the unsustainable resources. Therefore, striking a delicate balance between the versatilities of the fossil fuels and their negative environmental impacts (e.g. global warming and climate change) is crucial. Implementing robust strategies to positively impact global carbon balance ultimately leads to the utopia for the fossil-fuel-based economies; with taking full advantage of carbonaceous fuels while minimizing their undesirable effects. This is where carbon capture and sequestration technologies play a critical role to mitigate CO₂ from the large scale emitters. Current recipes for the CO₂ reduction from large-scale energy consumers (e.g. power stations and cement works) mainly rely on carbon capture and storage (CCS), having three proposed generic solutions: post-combustion capture, pre-combustion capture, and oxy fuel combustion; where the separated carbon dioxide is sent for the physical storage options afterwards. However, researchers believe CCS strategy does not solely resolve the problem permanently, just shifting that from the atmosphere to elsewhere. In fact, long-term ecological impacts of using the earth as a gigantic reservoir for CO₂ are off the beaten track. Adding the potential hazards of CO₂ leakage to the earth surface noticeably exacerbates the prospect of this approach. Considering all the facts, the ultimate solution of realistically facing with CO₂ sequestration concerns is the chemical transformation of CO₂ to valuable commodities such as fuels (through, for instance, Fischer–Tropsch chemistry) or polymers (through successive copolymerization and chain growth).  This sustainably reduces carbon emissions, remarkably benefiting from CO₂-derived chemical commodities, so-called carbon capture and conversion (CCC). Nevertheless, CO₂ reduction chemistry is challenging due to the presence of large energy barriers, requiring noticeable catalysis. This work aims to review the most recent advances in the CCC research area selectively (i.e. CO₂ conversion to fuels and CO₂ copolymerization) from chemical engineering viewpoint in terms of both materials and process design. Some of the most promising studies will be presented in detail with the emphasis on subsidizing more research on CO₂ conversion technologies considering the global carbon management urgencies.