(292g) CO2 Electrolysis As Unprecedently Low-Cost and Scalable Method for Isotopes Production

The transition towards the decarbonized, sustainable chemical engineering industry is challenging due to the fundamental reliance of the chemical sector on petrochemical feedstocks. Production of critical chemical building blocks by electrochemical methods, powered with renewable sources of energy, is a rapidly evolving technology that could drastically reduce CO₂ emissions from the chemical sector. However, it has been extremely challenging to showcase a cost-competitive chemical production by means of CO2 electrolysis (CO2R). We present here an alternative strategy: initial use of CO2R to generate an extremely high-value product, namely carbon dioxide stream enriched in the rare isotope of carbon 13C. We have discovered that direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide and electrochemical reduction of CO₂ can be modified so they will concurrently produce a carbon dioxide enriched in the stable ¹³C isotope (patent WO2022271103A2). Our technology is simple to implement, requires minimal modification of existing reactors and does affect their function, and will easily scale to the current production capacity of ¹³C isotopically labeled chemicals and beyond. The techno-economic analysis shows that CO2R-based separation of ¹³C isotope could drastically decrease the cost of production of ¹³C enriched streams (by a factor of 100). The excellent economic case of electrolysis-based isotopes separation will support investment into electrochemistry in general, which will lead to the improvement of the electrochemical reactors performance, decrease the investment cost, necessary to penetrate chemicals and fuels production markets. The benefits of such a synergistic development would span across several sectors and be an important stepping stone in the pursuit of Net Zero 2050 goal.

References:

[1] Barecka and Ager. Towards an accelerated decarbonization of the chemical industry by electrolysis. Energy Adv., 2023,2, 268-279

[2] Patent WO2022271103A2