Reasonable active site design for promoting water dissociation and carbon monoxide activation in Low Temperature Water-Gas Shift Reaction

To solve the energy crisis, water-gas shift reaction (WGSR) has been deeply and systematically studied for effectively providing pure hydrogen and removing hazardous carbon monoxide spontaneously. In typical industrial applications, the WGSR commonly consists of two individual processes: high-temperature shift reaction (320-450°C) for high reaction rate and low-temperature shift reaction (150-300°C) for high conversion due to their intrinsic thermodynamic and kinetic properties. Owing to the complexity of traditional catalytic system, researchers have made great efforts to seek low-temperature (< 300°C) reaction catalysts with better performance and energy efficiency. Recent advancements are mainly based on the correlation of catalyst components and reactivities for low-temperature WGSR. However, this work considers different ideas of catalyst design for enhancing low-temperature WGSR performance based on the combination of two half-reactions: water dissociation and carbon monoxide activation, which occur on different active sites. Therefore, only purposeful active site design for the two half-reaction can constitute a efficient catalyst. This review goals to summarize the advances in the recent decade and provides some possible active site design direction for future investigation.