Conversion of Carbon Dioxide: Opportunities and Fundamental Challenges

The rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide is one of the most urgent challenges facing societies nowadays. There is also great potential in energy carriers and other materials from CO_2, with many challenges to overcome. The way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be using carbon free sources that do not generate carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This article reviews recent developments, remaining challenges and novel approaches of CO₂ reduction for the efficient and sustainable production of fuels and valuable chemicals. It has been suggested that the CO₂ reduction and conversion may provide promising solutions for energy resource scarcity as well as reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Hence, this paper discusses novel technologies and approaches to reduce carbon dioxide to produce energy and chemicals through heterogeneous catalysis, electrocatalysis and photocatalysis, which will contribute to the economic growth and mitigate the hazardous emissions for cleaner environment. A review of the state-of-the-art of various technologies for carbon dioxide reduction was carried out aiming to demonstrate the advances in this area and provide an overview of the research trend for future development of new ideas for CO₂ reduction in a large scale.