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  • Perspective
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Carbon monoxide electroreduction as an emerging platform for carbon utilization

Abstract

The electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide to value-added chemical products has been heavily explored as a promising strategy for carbon utilization. However, the direct synthesis of multi-carbon (C2+) products suffers from undesired side reactions and relatively low selectivity. Electrochemically converting CO2 to single-carbon products is much more effective and being commercially deployed. Recent studies have shown that CO can be electrochemically transformed further to C2+ at high reaction rates, high C2+ selectivity and inherently improved electrolyte stability, raising the prospect of a two-step pathway to transform CO2. In this Perspective, the progress towards high-rate CO conversion is shown alongside mechanistic insights and device designs that can improve performance even further. A techno-economic analysis of the two-step conversion process and cradle-to-gate lifecycle assessment shows the economic feasibility and improved environmental impact of a high-volume commercial process generating acetic acid and ethylene compared to the current state of the art.

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Fig. 1: Overview of two-step CO2R process and current state of direct CO2R.
Fig. 2: Performance of state-of-the-art COR cells with reported performance at high rates (>100 mA cm–2 total current density).
Fig. 3: Mechanism of COR.
Fig. 4: Current and proposed COR electrolyser designs.
Fig. 5: TEA and LCA for complete CO2 conversion with COR.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge M. L. Hutchings (Yale University) for assistance in figure preparation. This material is based on work supported by the Department of Energy under award no. DE-FE0029868. The authors at the University of Delaware also thank the National Science Foundation for financial support (award no. CBET-1803200). G.S.H. acknowledges the support of the University of Delaware Blue Hen Proof of Concept programme.

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M.J. and G.S.H. contributed equally to this work. M.J., G.S.H. and F.J. performed data analysis and wrote the manuscript. F.J. supervised the whole project.

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Correspondence to Gregory S. Hutchings or Feng Jiao.

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Competing interests

G.S.H. and F.J. are co-founders of Lectrolyst, a company developing devices for electrocatalytic conversion including carbon monoxide reduction.

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Supplementary Figs. 1,2, Tables 1–3, Notes 1,2 and references.

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Jouny, M., Hutchings, G.S. & Jiao, F. Carbon monoxide electroreduction as an emerging platform for carbon utilization. Nat Catal 2, 1062–1070 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-019-0388-2

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