Proceedings of MATSUS Fall 2023 Conference (MATSUSFall23)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsus.2023.044
Publication date: 18th July 2023
Energy-intensive thermochemical processes within chemical manufacturing are a major contributor to global CO2 emissions. With the increasing push for sustainability, the scientific community is striving to develop renewable energy-powered electrochemical technologies in lieu of CO2-emitting fossil-fuel-driven methods. However, to fully electrify chemical manufacturing, it is imperative to expand the scope of electrosynthetic technologies, particularly through the innovation of reactions involving nitrogen-based reactants as products from water/CO2 electrolysis do not cover the full scope of industrial needs.
To this end, this talk focuses on my lab’s efforts nitrogen fixation to ammonia through the use of innovative electrochemical interfaces. I will proceed to detail new efforts in nitrogen fixation through the co-electrolysis of CO2 with N-reactants (N2, NO32-…) in generating products with C-N bonds like amides, urea that are important as commodity and fine chemicals in the chemical industry. In particular, I will discuss several new reaction pathways discovered towards C-N products and the application of operando techniques to understand the key C-N coupling steps in the reaction process.