(390f) Enhanced Multi-Carbon Selectivity Via Tandem CO2 Electroreduction

Electrifying chemical production is a potential approach to decarbonizing the chemical industry. Currently, 21% of the global greenhouse gas emissions come from the industry sector, while chemical manufacturing accounts for the largest share of industrial carbon emissions¹. The electrochemical processes, when powered by renewable electricity, have lower carbon footprints than conventional thermochemical routes. The rapid development of renewable energy provides opportunities for electrifying chemical production and decarbonizing the chemical industry. Among these, electrochemical CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR) attracted much attention as a potential pathway for carbon utilization and sustainable chemical production. In this presentation, I would like to present a tandem CO₂ electroreduction scheme for multicarbon (C₂₊) production. A molecular tuning strategy is applied to tune the intermediate binding energy and thus enhance the CO selectivity in the first step². Then CO₂ and CO electroreduction to C₂₊ products in alkaline conditions are compared, with particular emphasis on carbonate formation and carbon efficiency (i.e., the amount of carbon ended in the desired products divided by the total amount of CO₂ consumed)³. The conclusion is that CORR shows specific advantages over CO₂RR in the aspects of C₂₊ selectivity, stability, carbon efficiency, and single-pass conversion. Then oxide-derived Cu plates are chosen for the second step in tandem reduction, which shows a C₂₊ Faradaic efficiency of 83% at -0.59 V vs RHE. Lastly, we further extend our tandem system to electrocatalytic–thermocatalytic reaction for CO₂ conversion to C₃ oxygenate.

References:

1. Xia, R.; Overa, S.; Jiao, F., Emerging Electrochemical Processes to Decarbonize the Chemical Industry. JACS Au 2022, 2 (5), 1054-1070.
2. Xia, R.; Zhang, S.; Ma, X.; Jiao, F., Surface-functionalized palladium catalysts for electrochemical CO₂ J. Mater. Chem. A 2020, 8 (31), 15884-15890.
3. Xia, R.; Lv, J.; Ma X.; Jiao, F., Enhanced multi-carbon selectivity via CO electroreduction approach. Catal. 2021, 398, 185-191.