Scale up of reactors for carbon dioxide reduction

doi:10.1007/s11705-022-2178-7

Front. Chem. Sci. Eng.

2023, Vol. 17

Issue (1) : 116-122 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-022-2178-7

COMMUNICATION

Scale up of reactors for carbon dioxide reduction

Andrew Nattestad^1,²(

), Klaudia Wagner¹, Gordon G. Wallace¹(

)

¹. Intelligent Polymer Research Institute and ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia
². School of Chemistry, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia

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Abstract

In recent times there has been a great deal of interest in the conversion of carbon dioxide into more useful chemical compounds. On the other hand, the translation of these developments in electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide from the laboratory bench to practical scale remains an underexplored topic. Here we examine some of the major challenges, demonstrating some promising strategies towards such scale-up, including increased electrode area and stacking of electrode pairs in different configurations. We observed that increasing the electrode area from 1 to 10 cm² led to only a 4% drop in current density, with similarly small penalties realised when stacking sub-cells together.

Keywords CO₂ reduction electrochemical cell electrosynthesis upscaling

Corresponding Author(s): Andrew Nattestad,Gordon G. Wallace

About author:

Changjian Wang and Zhiying Yang contributed equally to this work.

Online First Date: 01 August 2022 Issue Date: 21 February 2023

Cite this article:

Andrew Nattestad,Klaudia Wagner,Gordon G. Wallace. Scale up of reactors for carbon dioxide reduction[J]. Front. Chem. Sci. Eng., 2023, 17(1): 116-122.

URL:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fcse/EN/10.1007/s11705-022-2178-7
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fcse/EN/Y2023/V17/I1/116

Fig.1 (a) Schematic representation of CO₂ reactor, with connections for supply and return of gasses and electrolytes located at the front panel; (b) 3D rendering of the device with single pair of 1 cm² electrodes.

Fig.2 CO₂ reduction reactor with 1 cm² electrode area. (a) Photograph of assembled reactor; (b) cyclic voltammograms with argon and with CO₂ flow; (c) stable current densities at –2.0, –2.5 and –3.0 V bias; (d) FE at biases shown in (c); (e) current density at –3.0 V over a 5 h period; (f) FEs from repeated sampling at –3.0 V over the course of several hours.

Fig.3 Stacked reactors with multiple pairs of electrodes. (a) Photograph of a stacked device with two pairs of electrodes; (b) stable current density summary data for two pairs of electrodes; (c) stacked devices connected electrically in parallel; (d) stacked devices connected electrically in series, with electrolyte flow either in series or parallel.

Fig.4 CO₂ reduction reactor with 10 cm² electrode area. (a) Photograph of assembled reactor; (b) stable current densities at –2.0, –2.5 and –3.0 V (2 electrode potentials); (c) FE at the potentials listed in (b); (d) the partial current densities for CO generation for 1 and 10 cm² electrodes with various current collector options at –3 V.

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