CO2 hydrogenation to methanol over Pd/MnO/In2O3 catalyst

Synthesizing methanol from CO2 and green hydrogen is a promising strategy to solve environmental issues and meet the increasing energy demand. In this work, Pd/MnO/In2O3 catalyst with highly dispersed Pd species was prepared via an in-situ reduction method using NaBH4 as the reducing agent. The highly dispersed Pd species promoted the dissociative of hydrogen and the hydride species could spill over to the MnO/In2O3 due to the strong metal-support interaction between Pd and MnO/In2O3, which improved the catalytic activity of Pd/MnO/In2O3 for CO2 hydrogenation to methanol. As a result, the methanol space-time yield of 1 wt% Pd/MnO/In2O3 was 4.8 times higher than that of MnO/In2O3. Moreover, the methanol selectivity of 1 wt% Pd/MnO/In2O3 was still higher than 70% at a temperature below 280 °C. The present in-situ reduction method is an effective route for the preparation of Pd/MnO/In2O3 catalyst for CO2 hydrogenation to methanol.