Issue 6, 2019

Transforming atmospheric CO2 into alternative fuels: a metal-free approach under ambient conditions

Abstract

This work demonstrates the first-ever completely metal-free approach to the capture of CO2 from air followed by reduction to methoxyborane (which produces methanol on hydrolysis) or sodium formate (which produces formic acid on hydrolysis) under ambient conditions. This was accomplished using an abnormal N-heterocyclic carbene (aNHC)–borane adduct. The intermediate involved in CO2 capture (aNHC-H, HCOO, B(OH)3) was structurally characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Interestingly, the captured CO2 can be released by heating the intermediate, or by passing this compound through an ion-exchange resin. The capture of CO2 from air can even proceed in the solid state via the formation of a bicarbonate complex (aNHC-H, HCO3, B(OH)3), which was also structurally characterized. A detailed mechanism for this process is proposed based on tandem density functional theory calculations and experiments.

Graphical abstract: Transforming atmospheric CO2 into alternative fuels: a metal-free approach under ambient conditions

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
12 Aug. 2018
Accepted
29 Nov. 2018
First published
30 Nov. 2018
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2019,10, 1879-1884

Transforming atmospheric CO2 into alternative fuels: a metal-free approach under ambient conditions

S. Chandra Sau, R. Bhattacharjee, P. K. Hota, P. K. Vardhanapu, G. Vijaykumar, R. Govindarajan, A. Datta and S. K. Mandal, Chem. Sci., 2019, 10, 1879 DOI: 10.1039/C8SC03581D

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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