Employing Non-Noble Metals As Catalysts for CO 2 Electroreduction

Vollständiger Abstract

Worum geht es in dieser Arbeit?

CO 2 electroreduction to fuels is one of the most viable solutions for tackling both the issues of global warming and energy crises. It is due to the fact that the products such as formic acid, methanol, etc. which are obtained by electroreduction of CO 2 could be employed as hydrogen carriers or directly as fuels. This phenomenon attracts huge research towards the process and its bottlenecks for making it commercial. The major hurdles regarding catalysis of CO 2 electroreduction process are low solubility of CO 2 in aqueous solutions and low product yields. In our previous works, we have already demonstrated the employment of gas diffusion electrodes for non – noble metal catalysts such as Pb, Bi and Sn. The usage of gas diffusion electrodes enables us to exploit the three phase contact of CO 2 gas – solid catalysts – liquid electrolyte and shows higher product (formate ion) yield. [1] Additionally, we have also shown through another work that the ternary eutectics of these three non – metal catalysts employed exhibits higher activity for CO 2 electroreduction than singular pure metals or any other binary or ternary alloyed compositions of the metals. [2] In this work, we want to exploit the conclusions from both the works and subject ternary alloy composition of Pb – Bi – Sn metals in gas diffusion electrode configuration for the process of CO 2 electroreduction. Based on the previous two results, author believes that this would enable us to obtain higher product yield and hence better energy efficiency which would be a step forward towards sustainable development. Reference: [1] A. S. Kumawat and A. Sarkar (2017), Comparative study of carbon supported Pb, Bi and Sn catalysts for electroreduction of carbon dioxide in alkaline medium , Journal of Electrochemical Society, 164 (14), H1112 – H1120. doi: 10.1149/2.0991714jes [2] A. S. Kumawat and A. Sarkar (2019), Electrochemical reduction of CO 2 on Pb – Bi – Sn metal mixtures – Importance of Eutectics, SN Applied Sciences 1: 301. doi: 10.1007/s42452-019-0313-y