ABSTRACT
Since the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere has increased significantly owing to human activities, causing climate change and global warming. Furthermore, the depletion of fossil fuel reserves owing to ever-growing consumption is another critical problem that threatens our civilization. Thus, innovative and global-scale solutions are required. One potential solution involves capturing CO2 from concentrated sources or the atmosphere and then converting it into high-value chemicals and liquid fuels. Urea, salicylic acid, carbonates, and so on, are examples of some commercial industries where CO2 is used as a feedstock since the nineteenth century. Carbon dioxide is an attractive feedstock, because it has advantageous characteristics such as being non-toxic, non-flammable, abundant, and inexpensive. Also, it exhibits unique supercritical properties that make it suitable for applications such as supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) and CO2-enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR). Carbon dioxide can also be converted into energy-rich products such as methanol, dimethyl ether (DME), formic acid, and syngas, which can be used as alternatives to fossil fuels. However, as CO2 is a stable molecule, energy input is required to upgrade it to a higher-value material. It is crucial that the input 418energy is renewable in order to be a sustainable process. This chapter presents an overview of different routes of CO2 utilization as a feedstock for fuels and chemicals production.
