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Electrochemical methods for carbon dioxide separations

Nature Reviews Methods Primers volume 2, Article number: 68 (2022) Cite this article

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Abstract

The build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is one of the grand challenges facing society. Addressing this challenge by removing CO2 from the atmosphere or mitigating point source emissions through the separation and concentration of CO2 from these dilute sources requires reductions in energetic and monetary cost relative to traditional thermal and pressure swing methods. Electrochemical methods of CO2 separation have drawn increasing attention in recent years as potentially cheap, low-energy, scalable carbon capture technologies. In this Primer, we provide an overview of the experimentation and analysis needed for the study of electrochemical methods for CO2 separation, including a discussion of the considerations necessary for targeting the application of such techniques. This Primer focuses on ambient temperature techniques such as pH swing and direct redox processes, which utilize similar experimental set-ups. We include considerations on the choice of redox agent and an outlook on this growing body of research. Experimentation to address real-world conditions, particularly at practical oxygen concentrations, and novel system designs that overcome transport limitations or, potentially, couple capture and CO2 utilization are emerging areas in the field.

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Fig. 1: Overview of electrochemical methods for CO2 separations.
Fig. 2: Overview of several types of electrochemical cells relevant to CO2 separation studies.
Fig. 3: Material characterization examples.
Fig. 4: Example results from small-scale systems.
Fig. 5: Cyclic bench-scale results.
Fig. 6: Continuous or batch results at bench scale.
Fig. 7: Illustration of the carbon cycle and electrochemical capture processes.
Fig. 8: Redox potential landscape for aqueous and non-aqueous electrochemical capture systems.

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Acknowledgements

K.M.D. acknowledges support from an appointment to the Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) through an interagency agreement between the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Kyle M. Diederichsen, Rezvan Sharifian.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Kyle M. Diederichsen, Jin Soo Kang, Yayuan Liu, Seoni Kim & T. Alan Hatton

  2. Faculty of Applied Sciences, Department of Chemical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

    Rezvan Sharifian & David Vermaas

  3. Wetsus, European Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology, Leeuwarden, Netherlands

    Rezvan Sharifian

  4. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Betar M. Gallant

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  1. Kyle M. Diederichsen
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  2. Rezvan Sharifian
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  3. Jin Soo Kang
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  4. Yayuan Liu
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Contributions

All authors researched data for the article. All authors contributed substantially to discussion of the content. All authors contributed towards writing the article. K.M.D. and T.A.H. reviewed and edited the manuscript before submission. Introduction (K.M.D., R.S. and D.V.); Experimentation (R.S., K.M.D., Y.L., J.S.K. and S.K.); Results (Y.L. and K.M.D.); Applications (R.S. and B.M.G.); Reproducibility and data deposition (K.M.D.); Limitations and optimizations (K.M.D.); Outlook (T.A.H. and D.V.); Overview of the Primer (K.M.D. and T.A.H.).

Corresponding author

Correspondence to T. Alan Hatton.

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Competing interests

T.A.H. is a co-founder and Scientific Advisory Board member of Verdox, Inc. D.V and R.S. co-founded SeaO2 and are involved as advisor and CTO, respectively. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Glossary

Amine scrubbing

A carbon separation technique that reacts CO2 with aqueous solutions of amine-based molecules in an absorption column, followed by release of CO2 and regeneration of the amine at elevated temperature in a stripping column.

Calcium looping

A carbon separation process that uses high temperatures (>600 °C) to oxidize calcium carbonate to release pure CO2 and calcium oxide, followed by reaction of calcium oxide with CO2 (in a dilute stream) to form additional calcium carbonate.

Temperature swing processes

Processes that capture CO2 from dilute sources at low temperature and release it at elevated temperature to regenerate the sorbent.

Organic redox

An electrochemical process that employs organic molecules that change oxidation state under applied potentials.

Electrophile displacement

A process in which a bound species is replaced by another species with a stronger binding constant.

Bipolar membrane

(BPM). Cation exchange membranes and anion exchange membranes laminated or electro-spun together with a water dissociation catalyst in between.

pH swing

A process that changes the pH of a liquid to induce a change in CO2 solubility.

Ohmic resistance

Resistance to the flow of electrons that follows Ohm’s law, typically related to current flow through a metal or the ionic conductivity of an electrolyte.

Column flooding

Flooding that occurs when liquid covers the full cross section of the column, leading to gas bubbling through the liquid with reduced overall mass transfer and increased pressure drop.

Baffling

Liquid flow directing devices within channels.

Nyquist plot

A representation of an electrochemical impedance spectroscopy experiment in which the negative of the imaginary component of the impedance is plotted against the real component of the impedance over a range of frequencies.

Direct air capture

(DAC). The separation of CO2 from air.

Direct ocean capture

(DOC). The separation of CO2 directly from ocean water to indirectly capture CO2 from the atmosphere.

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Diederichsen, K.M., Sharifian, R., Kang, J.S. et al. Electrochemical methods for carbon dioxide separations. Nat Rev Methods Primers 2, 68 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43586-022-00148-0

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