Energy & Fuels 2002, 16, 1329
1329
Book Reviews CO2 Conversion and Utilization. Chunshan Song, Anne F. Gaffney, and Kaoru Fujimoto, Editors. American Chemical Society: Washington, D.C. 2002. xiii + 428 pp. ISBN 0-84123747-6. This book, which contains 25 peer-reviewed articles covering various aspects of CO2 conversion and utilization, was developed based on the symposium on CO2 conversion and utilization as a part of the 219th American Chemical Society (ACS) National meeting, March 26-31, 2000, in San Francisco, California. The book is technically divided into 7 sections, including general overview, synthesis of organic chemicals, CO2 reduction over heterogeneous catalysts, synthesis gas production from CO2 reforming, effects of pressure and reactor type on CO2 reforming, photocatalytic and electrochemical reduction of CO2, and use of supercritical CO2 fluid. This book starts off with an interesting introduction overview by one of editors, C. Song, which covers the basic problems, scope, challenges, and opportunities of CO2 conversion and utilization. Two other interesting reviews, from M. Steinberg and L. E. Manzer, respectively, emphasize “CO2 mitigation and fuel production” and “CO2 emission reductions”. Those three reviews constitute the section of general overview. The section on synthesis of organic chemicals begins with a review, which is focused on key issues in CO2 utilization as a building block for molecular organic compounds in the chemical industry. The following papers in the section include (a) selective conversion of carbon dioxide and methanol to dimethyl carbonate over phosphoric acid-modified zirconia catalysts, (b) utilization of carbon dioxide for directly selective conversion of methane to ethane and ethylene over calciumbased binary catalysts, (c) copolymerization of carbon dioxide with propylene oxide and cyclohexene oxide over a yttriummetal coordination catalyst, and (d) the role of CO2 for the gasphase O2 oxidation of alkylaromatics to aldehydes. The section on CO2 reduction over heterogeneous catalysts contains one review and two research papers. The focus of the review is concentrated to the CO2 reduction by H2 or CH4 to synthesize highly valuable major building blocks for petrochemical industries such as ethylene, propylene, methanol and ethanol, and high quality fuels such as substituted natural gas and high octane-number gasoline. One of the two papers reports high activities of supported Cu-Mn oxide catalysts for methanol synthesis from CO2-containing syngas. The remain-
ing paper summarizes recent results of the catalytic reduction of CO2 into liquid fuels. There are five papers in the section of synthesis gas production from CO2 reforming, which present recent results about catalyst developments, including Ni-based and noblemetal-based catalysts. Over the past 10 years, as an important research area, CO2 reforming to syngas got a great progress in inhibiting carbon deposition on catalysts. It would have been nice if a review had been included to cover this area. Five papers are included in the section on effects of pressure and reactor type on CO2 reforming. Two of them discuss effects of pressure on CO2 reforming over Ni-based catalysts and Rhbased catalysts, respectively. One of them provides computational analysis of energy aspects of CO2 reforming and oxyCO2 reforming of methane at different pressures. The remaining two papers compare fixed bed and fluidized bed processes. The section on photocatalytic and electrochemical reduction of CO2 contains one review and one research paper. The review covers the photocatalytic reduction of CO2 with H2O on various titanium oxide catalysts, and the paper summarizes research results about electrochemical reduction of CO2 with gasdiffusion electrodes fabricated using metal and polymerconfined nets. The last section, which is on use of supercritical CO2 fluid, contains one review and one paper. Supercritical and nearcritical dense carbon dioxide phases have been heralded as environmentally benign solvents of great promise in many chemical applications. The review covers application of dense CO2 media in catalytic processes, including both heterogeneous and homogeneous catalytic systems. The paper discussed the possibility of coupling supercritical extractions in petroleum industry with CO2 conversion plants to reduce investments. Overall, this book presents a very useful and readable collection of reviews and research papers, which has a good balance of general information and current new results to be of interest to researchers, students, and engineers in the field of CO2 conversion and utilization. Yun Hang Hu, Corporate Strategic Research, Exxon Mobile Research and Engineering Company, 1545 Route 22 East, Annandale, New Jersey 08801-0998 EF020054P 10.1021/ef020054p
