Nanosfere di carbone quali componenti attivi nella produzione di bio-metanolo mediante riduzione di CO2

Carbon nanobeads obtained from acetylene by Cinvestav lab were characterized from a structural-morphological point of view, discovering a low surface area microspheres with size in the range of 200 nm and an almost graphitic structure. Such spheres offer the possibility of being used as a support for heterogenous catalysts. In fact, CNBs, characterized by the presence of different functional groups were successfully functionalized with inorganic acid and then used as support for the Cu-based catalyst preparation. Specifically, a Cu-ZnO-ZrO2/CNBs-N system has been prepared by gel- oxalate coprecipitation method and its activity has been evaluated in fixed-bed reactor under CO2 hydrogenation conditions for MeOH production. The catalytic results obtained at 30 bar in the temperature range of 200-260 °C were compared to the performance of classical formulation catalyst (Cu-ZnO-ZrO2) demonstrating an encouraging superiority of the supported system in terms of CO2 conversion (21.17% attained at 260 °C) and methanol yield (9.20% at 240°C).