Effect of cationic and anionic solid polymer electrolyte on direct electrochemical reduction of gaseous CO2 to fuel

Production of methanol from CO2 electroreduction at Cu2O and Cu2O/ZnO-based electrodes in aqueous solution

“…Ag/AgCl, respectively, at Cu-based electrodes [22], in good agreement with previous findings with oxidized Cu surfaces [14,16]. Consequently, according to the maximum reduction responses from the cyclic voltammetries, before a massive formation of bubbles was observed, a constant potential of -1.3 V vs. Ag/AgCl was applied in the all tests carried out in this study.…”

“…Consequently, a Cu2O loading of 1 mg•cm -2 seems to be optimal for the reaction under study. It is also worth noting that the highest efficiency obtained in the present work, (FE= 45.7%) outperformed the current best selectivity values reported at electrodes based on Cu2O particles electrodeposited on stainless steel (FE= 38%) [17] or for Cu2O particles deposited on carbon papers in a solid polymer electrolyte cell (FE= 20%) [22]. The improvement observed in the present work may be attributed to the promoting effect of Cu(I) species for CO2 reduction, the electronic structure of the Cu2O particles, as well as to the effect of the electrochemical cell configuration.…”

“…Finally, Table 4 compares the production of CH3OH, r, and efficiency, FE, at Cu2O (1) and Cu2O/ZnO (1:1)-based electrodes prepared in this study with previous results reported in literature for Cu-based surfaces, when different supporting electrolytes and cell configurations are applied [11,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Further advances are still required in order to develop catalyst materials with optimal performance for practical applications.…”

“…Unfortunately, among the many electrocatalytic materials previously investigated for CO2 reduction, none of them are both efficient and selective, and the most common products are CO and HCOOH, which are not as readily used as fuels as hydrocarbons or alcohols are [10]. Among the studied materials, copper (Cu), molybdenum (Mo) and ruthenium (Ru), as well as their mixtures and oxidized forms [11,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30], have been reported to be the most active materials for the electrochemical transformation of CO2 to CH3OH. Cu is the only known material capable of producing mixtures of chemicals potentially interesting for industrial applications at high reaction rates over sustainable periods of time [31][32][33][34].…”

Resource recovery by osmotic bioelectrochemical systems towards sustainable wastewater treatment

“…In our simulations, all design and operation parameters of the MEC, e.g., the volume of electrode chamber, aeration rate, and current density (Figure 6.2a), are taken from that in the experiments unless otherwise mentioned. For the CEM (CMI-7000) used in this system, was determined to be 5M using the method established in prior studies (Aeshala et al 2013, Dykstra et al 2014c, Sarmidi 2009, Sata 2004). The diffusion coefficient of various species in the CEM is usually smaller than that in bulk solutions Ruckenstein 2015, Dykstra et al 2014c).…”