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Liquid fuels produced by electrocatalytic CO2 reduction are costly to separate from liquid electrolytes in a conventional cell. This Perspective identifies the need for novel cell designs that can directly produce high-concentration and high-purity products and discusses the progress towards this goal using porous solid electrolytes.
The practical implementation of CO2 electrocatalysis is premised on the availability of captured CO2—a consideration that is often overlooked. This Perspective presents several concepts for integrating CO2 capture with electrochemical CO2 conversion for the enhancement of overall efficiency.
Electrochemical CO2 reduction is a complex process with many competing products, yet nature has evolved ways to overcome these issues. This Perspective makes connections between the motifs observed in nature and strategies that can be employed in synthetic systems for the advancement of selectivity in CO2 reduction.
Methanol is a leading candidate for storage of solar-energy-derived renewable electricity as energy-dense liquid fuel, yet there are different approaches to achieving this goal. This Perspective comparatively assesses indirect CO- and direct CO2-based solar strategies and identifies the conditions under which the former becomes economically viable.
