Sustainable production of light olefins from greenhouse gas CO2 over SAPO-34 supported modified cerium oxide

The direct supply of light olefins from CO2 hydrogenation has led to a tremendous interest in its important roles in reducing CO2 emissions. We study here a significantly effective, reliable and multifunctional catalyst, NiCu/CeO2-SAPO-34, capable of directly converting CO2 to light olefins with selectivity up to 76.6% (C2H4 = 22.7%, C3H6 = 35.5%, and C4H8 = 18.4%), while only 2.1% CH4 with CO2 conversion of 15.3% at H2/CO2 of 3, 12 L.gcat−1 h−1, 375 °C and 20 bar. Under optimum reaction conditions, the CO selectivity is lower than 65%. Physiochemical characterization of the catalyst was performed using BET, NH3-TPD, H2-TPR, XRD, TEM, and SEM techniques. Compared to the XRD patterns of SAPO-34 and NiCu/CeO2, the composite showed all characteristic XRD peaks of both samples. In addition, our designed hybrid catalyst also has beneficial catalytic stability, which can operate for 90 h without loss of apparent activity.