Decoupling of Reaction and Phase Equilibria in Low Temperature Reverse Water-Gas Shift Enabled by Magnetically Induced Catalysis

Equilibrium-limited endothermic reactions play a crucial role in the transition toward a more sustainable chemical industry, but are typically plagued by the need for high operation temperatures (>500°C). Here we show that the temperature gradients generated by the selective and localized heating of catalyst materials in a colder reactor environment enables the decoupling of reaction (bond forming and breaking events) and phase (phase transition from gas to liquid) equilibria and improves the performance of equilibrium-limited endothermic reactions. In particular, the reverse water gas shift reaction and magnetic induction are selected as model reaction and selective catalyst heating method, respectively. Magnetically induced catalysis using standard Cu–Al spinel-derived catalyst functionalized with carbon-coated iron nanoparticles enables high CO yield (up to 62%) at mild catalyst and reactor temperatures (300 and 25-123 °C, respectively). We demonstrate that the catalyst temperature and not the reactor temperature governs the equilibrium product composition of the rWGS, and that the temperature gradient promotes the in-situ removal of water to overcome the gas phase thermodynamic equilibrium. These two points synergistically result in a catalytic performance that would require a reactor temperature of 650 °C in a conventionally heated gas phase reaction.