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CO2 Electroreduction

Enhancing carbon utilization

Nature Energy volume 8, pages 119–120 (2023)Cite this article

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Zero–gap CO/CO2 electrolyzers typically exhibit low energy conversion efficiency at high reactant conversion due to current losses associated with the parasitic production of H2. Now, an electrolyzer using an electrocatalyst in bulk heterojunction with a hydrophobic covalent organic framework has maintained high energy efficiency at near unity reactant conversion.

Electrochemical CO2 reduction enables fuels and chemicals, such as multi-carbon alkenes, alcohols, aldehydes, and carboxylic acids, to be directly produced from the world’s most ubiquitous commercial byproduct. High carbon utilization and energy conversion efficiencies must be simultaneously obtained for this technology to be commercially viable. However, this has proven elusive in commercially relevant zero–gap electrolyzers operated at high current densities. Now, writing in Nature Energy, Adnan Ozden, Jun Li, Sharath Kandambeth, Xiao-Yan Li and colleagues based in Canada, China, Saudi Arabia, USA, and Spain report that high carbon utilization and energy conversion efficiencies can be simultaneously achieved by tuning the composition of the electrocatalyst microenvironment1.

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Fig. 1: Qualitative relationship between the CO2 reduction energy conversion efficiency and the carbon utilization efficiency.

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  1. The Pennsylvania State University, Chemical Engineering, 121 Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Building, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Ezra L. Clark

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  1. Ezra L. Clark
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Correspondence to Ezra L. Clark.

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Clark, E.L. Enhancing carbon utilization. Nat Energy 8, 119–120 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-023-01207-w

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