Electrocatalysis for CO₂conversion: from fundamentals to value-added products

Abstract

This timely and comprehensive review mainly summarizes advances in heterogeneous electroreduction of CO2: from fundamentals to value-added products.

Understanding the Effects of Anion Interactions with Ag Electrodes on Electrochemical CO2 Reduction in Choline Halide Electrolytes

“…Advances in new electrocatalyst materials for CO 2 R [3–12] provide a crucial strategy to improve the selectivity and activity. Still, there is a need to better understand how CO 2 and electrolytes interact with the catalysts and how these interactions during CO 2 R can play a significant role in enhancing CO 2 R selectivity and activity [13–16] . The effects of catholyte properties on CO 2 R selectivity described in the literature include the nature of solvents, [17–19] the type and size of cations, [20–22] pH, [23,24] and buffering capacity of the electrolyte [22,25] …”

A brief review of electrocatalytic reduction of CO2—Materials, reaction conditions, and devices

“…Electrochemical CO 2 reduction (ECR) is considered as one of the most promising approaches to convert CO 2 to valuable products and to help solve the energy and environmental crisis 1‐3 . ECR generally proceeds at benign reaction conditions under ambient temperatures and pressures, which greatly benefits the large‐scale applications 1,2,4,5,6 . As the power of ECR, electricity can be derived from renewable energies, such as solar energy, tide, and wind 1,2,4,5,6 .…”

“…ECR generally proceeds at benign reaction conditions under ambient temperatures and pressures, which greatly benefits the large‐scale applications 1,2,4,5,6 . As the power of ECR, electricity can be derived from renewable energies, such as solar energy, tide, and wind 1,2,4,5,6 . These renewable energies would be stored as chemical energies in high value‐added chemicals upon the ECR process, 1,2,4,5,6 which could be an ideal choice for energy conversion and storage technology for high energy densities and low costs.…”

“…As the power of ECR, electricity can be derived from renewable energies, such as solar energy, tide, and wind 1,2,4,5,6 . These renewable energies would be stored as chemical energies in high value‐added chemicals upon the ECR process, 1,2,4,5,6 which could be an ideal choice for energy conversion and storage technology for high energy densities and low costs. Considering the rapid increase of CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere (from 270 ppm in the 1800s to 401 ppm in 2015), 5 ECR technologies have attracted increasing interest in recent years (see the publication numbers per year, Figure 1).…”

“…Moreover, in the respect of profits of practical applications, the current density should at least exceed hundreds of milliampere/cm −2 and the overpotential should be low for high energy efficiency. The design of nanostructured electrocatalysts can improve ECR and has been reviewed in many previous papers 1,2,5,13 . However, a suitable catalyst only reduces the activation energy barrier of the reactions, but the other factors such as the mass transfer (temperatures, pressures, solubility, etc), the counter anodic reaction, and the configurations of the ECR electrolyzer can also thermodynamically and kinetically influence the efficiency of the ECR.…”