logo
ResearchBunny Logo
Abstract
In alkaline and neutral MEA CO2 electrolyzers, CO2 rapidly converts to (bi)carbonate, imposing a significant energy penalty arising from separating CO2 from the anode gas outlets. Here we report a CO2 electrolyzer uses a bipolar membrane (BPM) to convert (bi)carbonate back to CO2, preventing crossover; and that surpasses the single-pass utilization (SPU) limit (25% for multi-carbon products, C2+) suffered by previous neutral-media electrolyzers. We employ a stationary unbuffered catholyte layer between BPM and cathode to promote C2+ products while ensuring that (bi)carbonate is converted back, in situ, to CO2 near the cathode. We develop a model that enables the design of the catholyte layer, finding that limiting the diffusion path length of reverted CO2 to ~10 µm balances the CO2 diffusion flux with the regeneration rate. We report a single-pass CO2 utilization of 78%, which lowers the energy associated with downstream separation of CO2 by 10× compared with past systems.
Publisher
Nature Communications
Published On
Jun 24, 2022
Authors
Ke Xie, Rui Kai Miao, Adnan Ozden, Shijie Liu, Zhu Chen, Cao-Thang Dinh, Jianan Erick Huang, Qiucheng Xu, Christine M. Gabardo, Geonhui Lee, Jonathan P. Edwards, Colin P. O'Brien, Shannon W. Boettcher, David Sinton, Edward H. Sargent
Tags
CO2 electrolyzer
bipolar membrane
single-pass utilization
biocarbonate
C2+ products
electrochemistry
energy efficiency
Listen, Learn & Level Up
Over 10,000 hours of research content in 25+ fields, available in 12+ languages.
No more digging through PDFs, just hit play and absorb the world's latest research in your language, on your time.
listen to research audio papers with researchbunny