CO 2 hydrogenation to light olefins: Four matching rules for constructing high-performance bifunctional MCs-zeolites-based catalysts

CO2 hydrogenation with renewable H2 to produce the chemicals, particularly light olefins, is a feasible approach to mitigate CO2 emissions and realize carbon resources recycling. The coupling of "CO2-to-methanol catalysts (MCs)" with "methanol-to-light olefins zeolites" can directly and effectively convert CO2 into light olefins, but constructing the efficient bifunctional MCs-Zeolites catalysts is still a huge challenge owing to the complex structure-property relationships for the single catalytic component as well as the suitable assembling of these two catalytic components. In this review, we summarize four matching rules containing in the bifunctional MCs-Zeolites catalysts: Rule I screens out the qualified MCs to achieve the high methanol selectivity at high temperatures; Rule II screens out the zeolites to efficiently catalyze methanol to light olefins; further, Rule III proposes the efficiency-matching between "MCs for methanol formation" and "Zeolites for methanol conversion to light olefins" to increase the CO2-to-light olefins efficiency; Rule IV proposes the optimization of the spatial distributions of MCs and Zeolites to improve the light-olefins yield. The cross-fertilization of these four matching rules has innovatively constructed the membrane-controlled bi-components sandwich catalysts. This review further provided the ideas to design the more-advanced catalysts for CO2 hydrogenation to light olefins in the future.