Proceedings of nanoGe Fall Meeting 2021 (NFM21)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.nfm.2021.127
Publication date: 23rd September 2021
The boost in current density is a major achievement in the past decade for electrochemical CO2 reduction (ECO2R) process. Nevertheless, low CO2 utilization coming along with the high performance has been a setback for commercializing CO2 electrolyzers. The maximum utilization efficiency of CO2 in a device is plateaued at 50% under common operating conditions due to the parasitic loss of CO2 in the system. A promising approach is to introduce excess protons near the reaction domain. H+ can be provided either directly from an acidic catholyte or via a membrane, both of which will either neutralize the OH- produced directly, or regenerate CO2 from (bi)carbonates. Alternatively to acidic catholyte, protons provided by ion exchange membranes can be in a direct relation to the applied current density. Bipolar membranes (BPMs) operated under reversed bias can internally splits water to protons and hydroxide ions, thus protons are sent to the cathode and hydroxide to the anode. In addition, a BPM further allows for the use of an alkaline anolyte and non-noble metal-based anodes. Unfortunately, the use of BPMs reported in membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) has shown low ECO2R activity, with H2 remaining a dominant product. In this work, we firstly succeeded to increase the performance of BPMEA by increasing the cation (K+) concentration on the catalyst surface, which achieved CO faradaic efficiency of 68%. We then compared the CO2 conversion and consumption efficiency in above BPMEA with traditional anion exchange membrane in a MEA cell (AEMEA). Results show a 5-fold reduction in lost CO2, thus 2-3 times higher CO2 utilization efficiency in a BPMEA than AEMEA at similar current densities. This work addresses the direct importance of alkali cation concentrations when using BPMs in MEA cells, providing an approach for tackling low CO2 utilization issue in common CO2 electrolyzers at present.
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