Rationally Guided Design of Electrocatalysts and Systems for CO2-to-Fuels Using Renewable Electricity

The electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) to multi-carbon products, such as ethanol and ethylene, offers a route to produce fuels and chemicals from renewable energy. CO2RR technology is a promising solution to address the intermittency of renewable electricity and, ultimately, enable renewable fuels to contribute to displacing fossil fuels. In CO2RR to multi-carbon products, the electrocatalyst plays a vital role in determining the activity as well as the selectivity of the reaction. The design of a well-engineered system for CO2 electrolysis is as important as that of the electrocatalyst. The transport of reactants, the local pH control at the catalyst interface, and the structural integrity of the substrate, determine the industrial relevance of the CO2 electrolysis device and system. In this talk, we will introduce the recent developments in electrocatalysts and electrolyzer design. For electrocatalyst designs, we took advantages of computationally tools to identify the reaction intermediates stability and design catalyst that can steer the CO2RR selectivity between ethylene and ethanol. We will show that the local surface concentration of CO is essential for the formation of ethanol. For electrolyzer engineering, we focused on maximizing the CO2 utilization of the full capture-to-products process by designing a novel system configuration that is capable of carbonate electrolysis via the incorporation of a bipolar membrane. We report current densities that are in the 100+ mA/cm2 range and 100+ hours of continuous CO2RR operation.