(133e) Achieving Order of Magnitude Increases in CO2 Reduction Reaction Efficiency By Product Separations and Recycling

Decreases in renewable energy costs are driving significant interest towards electrochemical low-carbon fuel production strategies. Electrochemical conversion of CO₂ (CO₂RR) in e-refineries is at the center of many of these proposals. There have been numerous pieces of work focusing on reactor design and catalysts for these reactions, however, there are significantly less reports developing downstream separations processes and materials for the product mixtures which are inevitably needed to complement the reactions. The presented work focuses on designing downstream separations for such an e-refinery that converts CO₂ to ethylene with syn gas, acetic acid, and ethanol as by- products. We strategically utilize an input of methane to achieve >90% conversion of CO­₂ directly captured from air or flue gas. The process has negative net carbon footprint and improves overall conversion efficiency of the process by an order of magnitude without any changes to the reactor itself.