CO2 reuse chemically

Combating climate change is a major challenge for our contemporary societies. As a result, controlling atmospheric CO ₂ emissions is a priority for policies aimed at limiting global warming. Considering CO ₂ as a resource that can be valorized opens up new perspectives, both environmental and economic. Various industrial applications for CO ₂ recovery exist. These include, for example, biological or direct valorisation routes without transformation, which, to date, only enable CO ₂ to be used to a limited extent in terms of volume. Another recovery route, by chemical transformation, uses CO ₂ as a reagent in order to generate a valuable product or one with energy value.

In this article, the main techniques used to valorize CO ₂ by chemical means will be presented, such as mineralization, organic synthesis, hydrogenation, dry reforming, electrolysis, photocatalysis, thermochemistry... The developments of certain valorization techniques are being particularly followed by the scientific and industrial community. This is the case with methanation, which potentially enables CO ₂ leaving a combustion plant to be transformed directly into "renewable" methane.

Despite the interesting potential for CO ₂ utilization, the various recovery routes are not at the same stage of technological maturity. They still face specific problems of a technical, technological, know-how, resource supply... and economic profitability nature once CO ₂ is transformed into an energy product competing with fossil resources.