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

Journal Article · · ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
 [1];  [2];  [2];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [2];  [2];  [2];  [2]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); RWTH Aachen University (Germany)
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  3. RWTH Aachen University (Germany)
  4. RWTH Aachen University (Germany); DWI Leibniz-Institute for Interactive Materials, Aachen (Germany)
+ Show Author Affiliations
Coupling renewable electricity to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) electrochemically into carbon feedstocks offers a promising pathway to produce chemical fuels sustainably. While there has been success in developing materials and theory for CO2 reduction, the widespread deployment of CO2 electrolyzers has been hindered by challenges in the reactor design and operational stability due to CO2 crossover and (bi)carbonate salt precipitation. Herein, we design asymmetrical bipolar membranes assembled into a zero-gap CO2 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 CO2 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 CO2 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. Furthermore, all these results point to the future research direction and show a promising pathway to deploy CO2 electrolyzers at scale for industrial applications.
Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Office of Sustainable Transportation. Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
2346279
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 2350773
OSTI ID: 3003182
Journal Information:
ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, Journal Name: ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces Journal Issue: 19 Vol. 16; ISSN 1944-8244; ISSN 1944-8252
Publisher:
American Chemical Society (ACS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Related Subjects

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
asymmetric
bipolar membrane
catalysts
cell design
electrical properties
electrocatalysts
electrochemical CO2 reduction
electrochemical CO2 reduction
electrodes
forward-bias
membranes
water-fed