https://www.jst.go.jp/pr/announce/20241121-2/index.html

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacsau.4c00857

A research team from Tokyo University of Science, Osaka University, and Hokkaido University, has realized a plasma catalytic reaction system that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) to methane (CH4)(“methanation”), and elucidated the reaction mechanism. They applyied a non-equilibrium plasma, which simultaneously generates vibrationally excited CO2 and hydrogen atoms at low temperature, to a catalytic reaction based on a non-precious metal catalyst (Ni/Al2O3).

This new low-temperature chemical reaction system can be applied to a wide range of fields, including fuel synthesis using the Fischer-Tropsch process and ammonia synthesis using the Haber-Bosch process.