July 17, 2019 by
Department of Chemistry
Light-driven methanation of carbon dioxide holds great promise to close the carbon cycle and store and transport intermittent solar energy in the form of the chemical bonds of synthetic, “solar” methane.
In their Review article published in Nature Communications, Geoffrey Ozin, Uli Ulmer and co-authors critically appraise the latest scientific discoveries in the field of photocatalytic CO2 methanation. The photocatalytic methanation schemes explored include photothermal, plasmonic, biophoto, heterogeneous and homogeneous photoredox methanation. Photocatalytic CO2 methanation could eventually replace fossil CH4 if implemented at a large scale.