CO2 Hydrogenation to Methanol on Cu–ZrO2 Catalysts

The effective utilization of CO2 is gaining great attention due to its environmental relevance. As a matter of fact, synthesis of methanol from syngas (CO + H2) is very important in industry and synthesis of methanol from CO2 + H2 is one of the most economic processes. Therefore, it is important to develop new catalysts for this reaction with high activity and selectivity to methanol. Methanol synthesis is carried out at low temperature on copper-based catalysts, such as Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 and Cu/ZnO/Cr2O3 compounds, with various compositions (Klier et al., 1982). Besides, it has been shown that similar catalysts are also active for diene hydrogenation (Jalowiecki et al., 1987; 2006). Previously (Bali et al., 1995; 1996), we have shown that the Cu–Zr–O system prepared by coprecipitation is constituted after calcination of a zirconium and copper solid solution, in which Cu2+cations are inserted into the zirconia lattice, in close contact with copper oxide. The size of the latter varies from crystallized grains to small particles and/or clusters depending on experimental conditions.