Indonesia Conference Directory

Research on the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) level in the atmosphere has become one of major research topics worldwide. One of those researches is to convert CO2 into other valuable chemical substances such as methanol and formic acid through hydrogenation process. However, by using conventional industrial catalysts such as Cu-based catalyst as an agent for CO2 hydrogenation, the cost of reaction can be very energy taxing due to the inability of the catalyst to interact properly with CO2 molecule. Recently, many researches regarding new catalysts emerge such as Ni-based catalysts. In this study, we try to use small size Ni cluster supported on graphitic material as an alternative for CO2 hydrogenation catalyst. As an initial step, we study the ability of the supported Ni cluster to interact with CO2 molecule utilizing density functional theory-based calculations. We find that CO2 molecule can be strongly adsorbed on the Ni-Ni site of the supported Ni cluster with a bidentate adsorption configuration. The formation of this CO2 bidentate adsorption configuration will reduce the required activation energies for the subsequent CO2 hydrogenation reaction steps.