Increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions paired with increasing renewable electricity production has motivated the electrocatalytic production of fuels and feedstocks. The electrosynthesis of multicarbon (C2+) hydrocarbons and oxygenates, such as ethylene and ethanol, is attractive both due to their high market value and their large global market sizes. As the field of Cu-based electrocatalysts has matured, there is an increasing need for surrounding systems that can provide efficient transport of reactants, electrons, heat and products. This talk will describe our best catalyst:system pairings for CO and CO2 conversion, as well as our early learnings in the scaling of these operations to the pilot plant level. Carbon monoxide is a relatively high energy feedstock available from industrial gas emission streams. We observed that ethylene selectivity increases when we constrained CO availability. Tuning local CO availability via operating conditions we achieved ~70% of FEethylene for CO concentrations as low as 5%, and ethylene partial current densities of ~800 mA cm-2. We applied this approach to react a simulated coke oven gas mixture, typical of steel making, with over 70% FEethylene. Carbon dioxide is ubiquitous and a scalable CO2 reduction approach would enable greenhouse gas mitigation on a global scale. We achieved CO2 reduction in slim pressurized reactors with full-cell energy efficiencies of ~ 70%, but in systems that lose the majority of reactant to carbonate. We applied a membrane electrode assembly (MEA) strategy that separates the reactant gas from bulk liquid electrolyte and achieves 80% selectivity for C2+, including a stream of ~ 4wt% ethanol. In pursuit of the 2020 Carbon XPrize we are scaling this effort in a pilot plant with stacks of 800 cm2 plates. I will highlight our learnings on the opportunities and challenges arising as catalysts and systems, together, progress to commercial reality.

Electrocatalytic systems for the production of renewable fuels and feedstocks from CO2 and CO

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.