One-step plasma-enabled catalytic carbon dioxide hydrogenation to higher hydrocarbons: significance of catalyst-bed configuration

Effectively converting CO 2 into fuels and value-added chemicals remains a major challenge in catalysis, especially under mild conditions. In this study, we report a one-step plasma-enabled catalytic process for CO 2 hydrogenation to C 2 + hydrocarbons operated at low temperature and atmospheric pressure in a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) packed-bed reactor. Plasma without catalyst produces mainly CO (over 80% selectivity), while CH 4 becomes the main product when plasma is coupled with the alumina-supported Co catalyst. Interestingly, by simply changing the catalyst-bed configuration within the plasma discharge zone, more C 2 + hydrocarbons are selectively produced. High C 2 + hydrocarbons selectivity of 46% at ca. 74% CO 2 conversion is achieved when operated at the furnace temperature of 25 °C and 10 W DBD plasma. The possible origin of C 2 + formation and the significance of catalyst-bed configuration are discussed. C 2 + hydrocarbons are selectively produced in one-step catalytic CO 2 conversion via designing the catalyst-bed configuration under non-thermal DBD plasma operating at low temperature and atmospheric pressure.