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Recovering carbon losses in CO2 electrolysis using a solid electrolyte reactor

Nature Catalysis volume 5, pages 288–299 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

The practical implementation of electrochemical CO2 reduction technology is greatly challenged by notable CO2 crossover to the anode side, where the crossed-over CO2 is mixed with O2, via interfacial carbonate formation in traditional CO2 electrolysers. Here we report a porous solid electrolyte reactor strategy to efficiently recover these carbon losses. By creating a permeable and ion-conducting sulfonated polymer electrolyte between cathode and anode as a buffer layer, the crossover carbonate can combine with protons generated from the anode to re-form CO2 gas for reuse without mixing with anodic O2. Using a silver nanowire catalyst for CO2 reduction to CO, we demonstrated up to 90% recovery of the crossover CO2 in an ultrahigh gas purity form (>99%), while delivering over 90% CO Faradaic efficiency under a 200 mA cm−2 current. A high continuous CO2 conversion efficiency of over 90% was achieved by recycling the recovered CO2 to the CO2 input stream.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of CO2 crossover phenomenon in anionic MEA cells.
Fig. 2: Substantial carbon loss in traditional CO2 MEA electrolysers.
Fig. 3: PSE reactor design for crossover CO2 recovery and its gas analysis system.
Fig. 4: Crossover CO2 recovery characterization in an Ag NW solid electrolyte reactor.
Fig. 5: The wide applicability of crossover CO2 recovery using PSE reactor.
Fig. 6: DI water recycling and stability test for continuous CO2 gas recovery.
Fig. 7: Improved CO2 conversion via recycling crossover CO2.

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Data availability

Source data for the stability test shown in Fig. 6c are provided with this paper. All other data supporting this work are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support from Rice University, the National Science Foundation grant no. 2029442, the Welch Foundation Research grant (C-2051-2020040), and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (grant no. 2020-71371). This work was performed in part at the Shared Equipment Authority at Rice University. We acknowledge the use of aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy coupled with electron energy loss spectroscopy at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Jung Yoon ‘Timothy’ Kim, Peng Zhu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Jung Yoon ‘Timothy’ Kim, Peng Zhu, Feng-Yang Chen, Zhen-Yu Wu & Haotian Wang

  2. Center for Nanophase Materials Science, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    David A. Cullen

  3. Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Haotian Wang

  4. Department of Chemistry, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Haotian Wang

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  1. Jung Yoon ‘Timothy’ Kim
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Contributions

H.W. supervised the project. J.Y.T.K., P.Z. and H.W. designed the research. J.Y.T.K. and P.Z. performed the research. F.-Y.C., Z.-Y.W. and D.A.C. contributed new reagents/analytic tools. J.Y.T.K., P.Z., F.-Y.C., Z.-Y.W., D.A.C. and H.W. analysed the data. J.Y.T.K., P.Z. and H.W. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Haotian Wang.

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Nature Catalysis thanks Sarah Lamaison, Hongyan Liang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs 1−17, Note 1, Table 1 and References.

Supplementary Video 1

CO2 collection into a balloon during CO2RR in PSE reactor. 240× speed video of CO2 collection during CO2RR to CO using an Ag NW catalyst. The balloon inflation shows continuous recovery of CO2 gas during 90 min of CO2RR in a PSE reactor.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 6

Chronopotentiometry cell voltage data for long-term electrolysis test.

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Kim, J.Y.‘., Zhu, P., Chen, FY. et al. Recovering carbon losses in CO2 electrolysis using a solid electrolyte reactor. Nat Catal 5, 288–299 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-022-00763-w

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