Research Progress on CO2 Hydrogenation to Aromatics: Catalyst Design, Kinetic Modeling, and Reactor Engineering

• • CO2 hydrogenation to aromatics proceeds via two distinct pathways—methanol-intermediate and olefin-intermediate—each requiring multifunctional catalysts; the methanol route typically operates at 250-300°C and 3-5 MPa, while the olefin route via modified Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (as cited in reference [9]) achieves high aromatics yield, underscoring the need for precise temperature and pressure control to maximize selectivity. • • The core design principle for efficient bifunctional catalysts is balancing synergy and separation of hydrogenation and acidic aromatization sites; core-shell architectures prevent alkaline promoter migration into zeolites, which otherwise deactivates the aromatization component, as evidenced by studies on Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 and zeolite composites. • • Kinetic models for CO2 hydrogenation must accurately quantify the water inhibition effect in methanol synthesis; for example, water partial pressure can reduce methanol formation rate by up to 50% at typical reaction conditions, necessitating its inclusion in reactor design to avoid overestimating conversion. • • For aromatization kinetics, lumping models simplify the reaction network for robust CFD simulations, while single-event microkinetic (SEMK) models provide mechanistic detail; SEMK models, though computationally intensive, enable prediction of product distributions with accuracy within 5% for key aromatics, guiding reactor scale-up.