When Carbon Meets CO2: Functional Carbon Nanostructures for CO2 Utilization

Abstract

Major fossil fuel consumption associated with CO2 emission and socioeconomic instability has received much concern within the global community regarding the long-term sustainability and security of these commodities. The capture, sequestration, and conversion of CO2 emissions from flue gas are now becoming familiar worldwide. Nanostructured carbonaceous materials with designed functionality have been extensively used in some key CO2 exploitation processes and techniques, because of their excellent electrical conductivity, chemical/mechanical stability, adjustable chemical compositions, and abundant active sites. This review focuses on a variety of carbonaceous materials, like graphene, carbon nanotubes, amorphous porous carbons and carbon hybrid composites, which have been demonstrated promising in CO2 capture/separation and conversion (electrocatalysis and photocatalysis) to produce value-added chemicals and fuels. Along with the discussion and concerning synthesis strategies, characterization and conversion and capture/separation techniques employed, we further elaborate the structure-performance relationships in terms of elucidating active sites, reaction mechanisms and kinetics improvement. Finally, challenges and future perspectives of these carbon-based materials for CO2 applications using well-structured carbons are remarked in detail.