Increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere due to modern way of life has a negative impact on the environment. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in technologies that contribute to reducing emissions. One of those methods involves the synthesis of methanol, starting with carbon dioxide and hydrogen. This technology is useful for two reasons, it reduces emissions of carbon dioxide in the air and the produce of a substance that can be used as an alternative fuel or as a starting material for organic synthesis. Methanol can also be used for other purposes as it is one of the most widely used components in the chemical industry. The conversion of CO2 is very difficult, as this molecule is thermodynamically stable and has very low reactivity. Because of these reasons, for efficient conversion it is necessary to invest sufficient energy, to ensure appropriate reaction conditions and to use an efficient catalyst.
In this research work we studied the influence of doping CuO/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst on methanol synthesis. Three metals, rhodium, nickel, and platinum were added to the CZA commercial catalyst. The amount, of metals doped should be kept to a minimum, to reduce the expenses and to reduce unwanted side reactions. Due to the strong interaction between the metal and the metal oxide, the apparent activation energy of the catalyst may decrease, and a higher production of methanol may be formed. Different amounts of metals were doped to the catalysts by the impregnation method and then tested under the same reaction conditions. The results showed that the largest share of the formed methanol is produced with catalysts on which no metal was dopped. These catalysts also have the lowest activation energy. The results also show that with catalysts with nickel and platinum, we get higher share of carbon monoxide than methanol. This tells us that these catalysts have higher selectivity for carbon monoxide. It can be concluded that the strong interaction between metal and metal oxide did not occur with these catalysts. Using the data obtained from the EDS analysis, we calculated the average proportions of metals and their distribution. A sufficient proportion of metals was applied to the catalysts, and their distribution is adequate. We can conclude that the metal is not entirely in the pores of the catalyst but is also on the surface of the catalyst. It would be interesting to look at the effect of metals doped to the catalyst with a different method of catalyst preparation.
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