Researchers Design a Novel Hollow-Fiber Cu Penetration Electrode for Efficient CO2 Electroreduction----Shanghai Advanced Research Institute,Chinese Academy of Sciences

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Researchers Design a Novel Hollow-Fiber Cu Penetration Electrode for Efficient CO2 Electroreduction

date： 2023-12-26

Electrochemical conversion of CO₂ into value-added chemical fuels driven by renewable electrical energy has twofold roles in reducing net CO₂ emission and in addressing energy consumption.

Although considerable progress has been made in CO₂ electroreduction, carbonate formation can cause serious CO₂ loss. CO₂ conversion in acidic electrolyte is an attractive way to overcome CO₂ loss, however, the selective reduction remains a challenge.

Motivated by this challenge, a research team from the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute (SARI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences designed a Cu hollow fiber penetration electrode to electroreduce CO₂ in strong acid with effective inhibition of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER).

The results were published in Energy & Environmental Science on December 13, 2023.

By virtue of the unique penetration effect induced by Cu hollow fiber, abundant CO₂ molecules were supplied to Cu active sites. Cu surface possessed enough high CO₂ coverage, which suppressed HER and facilitated CO₂ reduction to C₂₊ products.

Thus, a CO₂ single-pass conversion rate exceeding 51% with a C₂₊ Faradaic efficiency of 73.4% and partial current density of 2.2 A cm^-2 was achieved in acidic solution (pH = 0.71). The performance of the Cu penetration electrode approximated to or even outperformed those of the state-of-the-art Cu base catalysts.

This work represents an encouraging headway in the design and development of new electrode configurations to realize CO₂ electroreduction to high-value C₂₊ chemicals with scalable applications.

Schematic diagram and electrocatalytic performance comparison of CO₂ reduction in acidic media over Cu hollow fiber penetration electrode (image by SARI)