Green Syngas by Solar Dry Reforming

[Figure presented]Geoffrey Ozin is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Toronto and Government of Canada Research Chair in Materials Chemistry and Nanochemistry. He is an Honorary Professor at The Royal Institution of Great Britain and University College London, External Advisor for the London Centre for Nanotechnology, Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Surface and Colloid Science, Global Chair at Bath University, and Guest Professor at the Center for Functional Nanostructures at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Professor Ozin leads the Solar Fuels Team at the University of Toronto. [Figure presented]Alexandra Tavasoli is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto and a member of the University of Toronto Solar Fuels Research Cluster. She holds a BASc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto and previously worked at the MaRS Advanced Energy Center in Toronto. In this Commentary, we highlight the discovery of a photothermal catalyst for dry reforming, a process that converts both CO2and CH4into syngas. While most GHG utilization strategies focus on CO2reduction, CH4has a global warming potential 30 times that of CO2. We discuss the roots of this work in the exploding field of photocatalytic CO2reduction and discuss the potential avenues forward for this technology that is able to “kill two GHGs with one stone.” © 2018 Elsevier Inc.