Research Projects

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a significant greenhouse gas released due to industrialization, contributing to climate change and environmental issues. However, CO2 is also necessary for plant growth and industrial processes. To reduce CO2 emissions and convert it into value-added chemicals, various methodologies have been developed, but high-temperature, high pressure, and expensive catalysts limit the production of chemicals from CO2. Photocatalysis, an alternative approach using solar energy, is an alternative but has not shown promising catalytic efficiency. Oxidative transformation through photocatalysis offers a more environmentally friendly and economically viable way to produce fine chemicals. Although many photocatalytic systems with half reactions (photoreduction and photooxidation) are being researched, simultaneous photoreduction of CO2 and photooxidation of biomass is in its infancy stage. This paper proposes designing and synthesizing highly efficient and low-cost semiconductor nanocomposite photocatalysts for the photoreduction of CO2 to C1 and C2 under ambient conditions, while holes will photooxidize organic precursor compounds like amines to imines and biomass precursor to fine chemicals. The proposed work aims to design and synthesize highly efficient and low-cost semiconductor nanocomposite photocatalysts for the simultaneous production of fine chemicals from organic precursors and fuels from H2 and CO2. The efficient redox photocatalyst in a highly stable TM/CeO2-g-C3N4 heterojunction will utilize both photogenerated electrons and holes for the simultaneous CO2 reduction and biomass derived organics under simulated sunlight using TM/CeO2-g-C3N4 heterojunction. Mechanistic studies will be carried out using in-situ EPR and in-situ DRIFTS techniques.