One strategy to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions is the use of CO2 as a feedstock for the production of useful intermediates or chemicals such as formic acid, carbon monoxide, ethylene, ethanol, or methanol via the electrochemical reduction of CO2. Over the past decade, significant advances have been made in the development of suitable electrocatalysts for the efficient and selective conversion of CO2 to some of the aforementioned products. Scale up and commercialization activities are already ongoing for electrolysis of CO2 to formic acid or CO. These processes have the promise to be executed in a cost effective and sustainable manner. This presentation will summarize our efforts to perform electrolysis of CO2 (1) to CO, a key building block for synthesis of fuels and chemicals, and (2) to ethylene and ethanol. First the selective and efficient conversion of CO2 to CO using Ag, Au, and N-doped carbon based catalysts will be summarized. The second part will cover our recent advances in developing ever more active and especially selective catalysts for the production of ethylene and ethanol. While reasonable conversion rates have been reported using a variety of Cu-based catalysts (overall current densities exceeding 100 mA/cm2), the main challenge has been achieving selectivity for the desired products of ethylene and ethanol. Recently we have reported Cu-based catalysts that produce &gt;80% ethylene and ethanol, at a combined rate exceeding 170 mA/cm2. Third, the presentation will also summarize an analysis of economic feasibility for the production of CO, ethylene, and ethanol from CO2, which highlights the importance of low electrical energy cost (as expected) as well as the need for low energy requirements (low cell potential), and high energy efficiency of the anodic and cathodic reactions (low overpotentials) in the electrolysis process itself, which can be achieved for example by performing reactions other than oxygen evolution on the anode side.

Catalysts for efficient electrochemical reduction of CO2 to CO or ethylene/ethanol

256th National Meeting (2018)

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