Publication date: 10th April 2024
Electrochemical membrane reactors offer the opportunity to increase the yield of relevant chemical reactions such as the production of synthetic liquid fuels as well as to improve their energy efficiency by coupling exothermic and endothermic processes.
This work, developed in the frame of the EU Horizon 2020 “eCOCO2” project, presents the CO2 electro-catalytic reduction into methane by using tubular protonic membrane reactors. Two different modes of operation were employed to provide the needed H2 for the methanation reaction: H2 pumping and electrolysis. In both operation modes, the protonic membrane was composed of BaZr0.8Ce0.1Y0.1O3 as electrolyte and the cermet Ni+BaZr0.7Ce0.2Y0.1O3 as inner metallic electrode acting as support and as methanation catalyst. In the case of the H2 pumping, the outer electrode was made of Ni+BaZr0.7Ce0.2Y0.1O3 whereas for the electrolysis, an electrode made of PrBa0.5Sr0.5Co1.5Fe0.5O5+δ (PBSCF) was used.
Transport properties of the electrochemical cells were evaluated by impedance spectroscopy, i-V curves and H2 production as a function of the applied current density and the operational conditions, from 600 ºC to 450 ºC and pressures up to 30 bar. Then, methanation reaction performance was also evaluated as a function of the operational parameters, analyzing the CO2 conversion and CO and CH4 yields.
In both operational modes, it was observed that the total system pressure plays a key role in both the electrochemical and catalytic performances of the protonic cells. The improvement in the performance at high pressure is due to two effects occurring simultaneously as it was inferred from DRT analysis: (i) an increased hydration of the electrolyte which enhances the proton conductivity and (ii) the improvement of the surface kinetics and mass transfer of the electrodes. Regarding catalytic performance, CO2 conversion and CH4 selectivity increase significantly with pressure, reaching values of 86% and 94% respectively, for a stoichiometric H2/CO2 ratio of 4 at 450 °C and 30 bar.
In addition, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were conducted to gain critical insights into the reaction kinetics, transport phenomena, and electrochemical performance of the membrane reactor.
This study has received European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation funding under grant agreement No 838077. CoorsTek Membrane Sciences is gratefully acknowledged for their assistance in the manufacture of tubular cells.
nanoGe is a prestigious brand of successful science conferences that are developed along the year in different areas of the world since 2009. Our worldwide conferences cover cutting-edge materials topics like perovskite solar cells, photovoltaics, optoelectronics, solar fuel conversion, surface science, catalysis and two-dimensional materials, among many others.
Previously nanoGe Spring Meeting (NSM) and nanoGe Fall Meeting (NFM), MATSUS is a multiple symposia conference focused on a broad set of topics of advanced materials preparation, their fundamental properties, and their applications, in fields such as renewable energy, photovoltaics, lighting, semiconductor quantum dots, 2-D materials synthesis, charge carriers dynamics, microscopy and spectroscopy semiconductors fundamentals, etc.
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV) is celebrated yearly in May. The main topics are the development, function and modeling of materials and devices for hybrid and organic solar cells. The field is now dominated by perovskite solar cells but also other hybrid technologies, as organic solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and dye-sensitized solar cells and their integration into devices for photoelectrochemical solar fuel production.
Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics
The main topics of the Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics (IPEROP) are discussed every year in Asia-Pacific for gathering the recent advances in the fields of material preparation, modeling and fabrication of perovskite and hybrid and organic materials. Photovoltaic devices are analyzed from fundamental physics and materials properties to a broad set of applications. The conference also covers the developments of perovskite optoelectronics, including light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.
The International Conference on Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics Perovskite Photonics and Optoelectronics (NIPHO) is the best place to hear the latest developments in perovskite solar cells as well as on recent advances in the fields of perovskite light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.