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Best practices for electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide

Nature Sustainability (2023)Cite this article

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Carbon capture, utilization and storage, a fundamental process to a sustainable future, relies on a suite of technologies among which electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide is essential. Here, we discuss the issues faced when reporting performance of this technology and recommend how to move forward at both materials and device levels.

Electrochemical reduction of CO2 into value-added chemicals has attracted considerable attention recently1,2,3. However, reporting the performance of a new CO2 electrocatalyst or a new reactor design is not trivial because of the complex nature of the CO2 electroreduction reaction. In many cases, the results are presented in a confusing manner, rendering it difficult to assess the true performance of the catalyst and/or device. In this Comment, we first discuss common problems in reporting the performance of a new electrocatalyst (including both heterogeneous and molecular catalysts) in the literature and then extend the discussion to how the products should be properly measured and quantified. Finally, we comment on the issues associated with full-cell level studies and recommend the best practices for electrochemical CO2 reduction.

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Fig. 1: Schematic illustration of the basic configurations of an electrochemical cell for a CO2 reduction experiment.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank C. A. G. Rodriguez at Technical University of Denmark for creating the figure. B.S. acknowledges funding from the Villum Foundation V-SUSTAIN grant 9455 to the Villum Center for the Science of Sustainable Fuels and Chemicals and funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 85144 (SELECT-CO2). M.R. acknowledges the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) for partial financial support. F.J. thanks the financial support by the US National Science Foundation (award no. 2119435).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

    Brian Seger

  2. Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Electrochimie Moléculaire, Paris, France

    Marc Robert

  3. Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Paris, France

    Marc Robert

  4. Center for Catalytic Science and Technology, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Feng Jiao

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  1. Brian Seger
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Correspondence to Feng Jiao.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Seger, B., Robert, M. & Jiao, F. Best practices for electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide. Nat Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-01034-z

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