Using renewable electricity sources to efficiently reduce CO2 into value-added chemicals has been long sought after as a method for both CO2 mitigation and energy storage from intermittent sources such as solar, hydroelectric, and wind. In practice, these processes are limited by the lack of an air-tolerant, high-efficiency CO2 reduction system. While many inorganic, biological, and bio/inorganic hybrid approaches have been explored; it remains difficult to efficiently produce compounds consisting of more than two carbon atoms. Here we report a scalable bio/inorganic hybrid system with high energy efficiency of CO2 reduction for bio-plastic and fusel alcohol isopropanol. Distinct from previous efforts, a bio-benign electrode pair was designed to electrochemically split water into H2 and O2 with minimal toxicant generation at unprecedented low driving voltages. CO2 and evolved H2 are then used by microbes to produce biomass and other valuable chemicals. This bioelectrochemical system consumes CO2 equivalent to about 500 liter of air per day per liter of culture; and an equivalent solar-to-chemical conversion close to 10% can be achieved, if coupled with commercially available photovoltaic (PV) panels of 18~20% efficiency.

Electrochemically augmented biosynthetic platform of CO2 fixation

251st National Meeting (2016)

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