This paper will describe the effects of membrane composition on the performance of a zero gap room temperature CO2 electrolyzer. Previous workers have used a number of commercial and manually made membranes for CO2 electrolysis, but the performance was lacking. In this work, we varied the composition of the membrane to optimize performance. We found that the best membranes1 contained ionic components that lower the overpotential for CO2 electrolysis2, 3. The cell performance was further improved up to 600mA/cm2 by incorporation of anion exchange ionomer and porous carbon into the Ag cathode as shown in Figure 1. The improved performance was attributed to the extended three phase boundaries in Ag cathode. A cell with optimized cathode and anion exchange membrane has run for over 3500 hrs at 200 mA/cm2 and 3V at room temperature with stable high selectivity of ~95%4. Currents rise to 600 mA/cm2 at 50°C. Solid electrolyte CO2 electrolysis with anion exchange membrane has the potential to pave the way for the commercialization of CO2 conversion to useful chemicals.

High performance CO2 electrolyzers

254th National Meeting (2017)

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