Ionic liquids for CO₂ Capture and Reduction

Dear Colleagues,

Unfortunately, we did it! On 11^th May 2019, humans just set another grim record of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, reaching over 415 parts per million, as reported by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, California. This is the highest concentration of this greenhouse gas in all of human history! When Charles David Keeling devised his, today iconic, graph in 1958, the levels of carbon dioxide in the air oscillated around 315 ppm. The rapid rise of carbon dioxide concentration is unambiguously caused by human activity, principally by the burning of fossil-fuels. Needless to say, humankind currently depends mainly on fossil-based carbon resources, and, very probably, will do so in the near future. A recent report of International Energy Agency states that global energy consumption in 2018 increased at nearly twice the average rate of growth since 2010, and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.7% to a historic high of 33.1 Gt CO₂.

Under these circumstances, a significant investment has been made into exploring means of reducing the amount of this invisible pollutant released into the environment, with three main strategies emerging. The first potential solution includes a diversification of energy resources, technical advancement, and legislation. The second strategy is carbon capture and storage (CCS). The third option concerns utilization and conversion of CO₂ (CCU) into other useful products. At present, taking into consideration the size of the problem, CCS is the only strategy being actually able to contribute to closing the global CO₂ cycle. The CO₂ utilization strategy could be an attractive alternative to CCS, but only if CO₂ were used on a large scale or converted into products for which there is a significant demand, such as fuels or polymeric/construction materials. Whatever the scenario—CCS or CCU—both approaches have a common denominator: the CO₂ capture process. It can be predicted that captured and compressed carbon dioxide will become a readily available and cheap feedstock, leading to a demand for new, environmentally friendly pathways for its utilisation.

Ionic liquids (ILs), although raising some queries on their “greenness” or high CO₂ uptake capacity, can definitely bring numerous advantages to the process/operation due to their remarkable properties, such as non-volatility, structure tunability, and high thermal stability. IL-promoted CCU processes have attracted much attention. It has already been shown that ionic liquids can be used as solvents, dehydrants, or catalysts, and be adequate media for carbon dioxide dissolution, activation, and stabilisation of active species.

The key objective of this Special Issue of C—Journal of Carbon Research is to present relevant and recent insights on the role of ionic liquids in CO₂ capture and reduction. The main focus of the proposed Issue includes but is not limited to the following topics:

• The synthesis, characterization, and application of novel and advanced ionic liquid-based systems for CO₂ capture, including fundamental aspects like the mechanisms and nature of the interactions involved, and the influence of the system’s structure;
• The design, preparation, and performance evaluation of catalytic systems based on ionic liquids for carbon dioxide conversion, primarily reduction (chemical, electrochemical, photocatalytic, and enzymatic), to valuable chemical and renewable fuels;
• Integration with the existing processes/intensification of the ILs-based CO₂ capture and conversion technologies; the design and assessment of the process from economic, environmental, and technological points of view; and the possibility of scaling up and commercialisation.

We invite authors to submit comprehensive research articles, reviews, communications, or letters representing both experimental and theoretical studies of materials and processes used in the capture and chemical conversion of carbon dioxide.

Dr. Małgorzata Zakrzewska
Guest Editor

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• carbon dioxide capture
• carbon dioxide utilization
• carbon dioxide reduction
• ionic liquid
• ionic liquid system
• solubility of carbon dioxide
• carbon dioxide sorption