The 10th International Conference on Water Resource and Environment (WRE 2024)

Abstract: Nanostructured ceria has drawn a great interest in sustainable catalysis research due to its unique oxygen release/storage capability. In this presentation, I will introduce two research topics associated with CO2 reactions with ceria nanorods in environmental and energy fields. Firstly, a facile reflux process was developed to synthesize defective mesoporous ceria nanorods in a mild environment. Particularly, it is found that the rapid reflux synthesis enriches the surface with abundant trivalent Ce ions and oxygen vacancy sites. These features significantly improve the catalytic activity of ceria nanorod in synthesizing dimethyl carbonate (DMC) from CO2 and methanol with water as the only byproduct, which can replace the conventional toxic process using phosgene. Secondly, lithium-carbon dioxide (Li-CO2) battery has been proposed as a novel and attractive strategy for next-generation energy conversion and storage devices due to its high specific energy density and utilization of CO2 as energy source. However, the research on Li-CO2 battery still faces several challenges including low energy efficiency, slow charge/discharge rates, low power density, and short cycling life because of unavoidable formation of stable byproducts like Li2CO3 during repeated cycling. In our work, we utilized the ceria nanorods as the electrocatalyst in the cathode material for Li-CO2 batteries. The unique interaction between ceria and CO2 is found to improve the reactivity on the cathode surface, thus enhancing the CO2 reduction and Li2CO3 decomposition performance. In sum, the nanostructured ceria offers a promising opportunity for designing cost-effective materials with enhanced catalytic properties to meet future demands in sustainable research.