Pure-Water-Fed Forward-Bias Bipolar Membrane CO₂ Electrolyzer

Abstract

Coupling renewable electricity to reduce carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) electrochemically into carbon feedstocks offers a promising pathway to produce chemical fuels sustainably. While there has been success in developing materials and theory for CO 2 reduction, the widespread deployment of CO 2 electrolyzers has been hindered by challenges in the reactor design and operational stability due to CO 2 crossover and (bi)carbonate salt precipitation. Herein, we design asymmetrical bipolar membranes assembled into a zero-gap CO 2 electrolyzer fed with pure water, solving both challenges. By investigating and optimizing the anion-exchangelayer thickness, cathode differential pressure, and cell temperature, the forward-bias bipolar membrane CO 2 electrolyzer achieves a CO faradic efficiency over 80% with a partial current density over 200 mA cm −2 at less than 3.0 V with negligible CO 2 crossover. In addition, this electrolyzer achieves 0.61 and 2.1 mV h −1 decay rates at 150 and 300 mA cm −2 for 200 and 100 h, respectively. Postmortem analysis indicates that the deterioration of catalyst/polymer− electrolyte interfaces resulted from catalyst structural change, and ionomer degradation at reductive potential shows the decay mechanism. All these results point to the future research direction and show a promising pathway to deploy CO 2 electrolyzers at scale for industrial applications.

Revealing the limits of energy recovery in forward-bias bipolar membranes

“…Such membranes have been demonstrated for water management 52 , and have recently been shown to similarly direct neutral species out of the FB-BPM, thereby allowing for a pressure outlet at the AEL|CEL interface to ameliorate gas-induced delamination. 44,53…”