Electrochemical conversion of CO2 to formic acid at elevated temepratures
November 2021 – October 2025
One of the greatest challenges faced by our current generation is
lowering the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere
and reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The electrochemical
CO2 reduction (ECR) provides a solution to this problem by utilizing
CO2 in combination with renewable energy and convert it to valuable
chemicals (here formic acid, FA). However, to make the process
more rapidly industrially feasible it would be beneficial to replace the
anodic oxygen evolution reaction at the counter electrode with an
economically more interesting one, like alkane dehydrogenation. This
reaction, however, requires elevated temperatures, up to 100°C,
which signifies that the cathodic CO2 reduction should also operate
efficiently at these temperatures. Unfortunately, little is known on the
effect of elevated temperatures on the overall performance of CO2
reducing electrolyzers and especially electrocatalysts. The goal of
this project is thus to develop SnO2-based electrocatalysts that allow
high and stable ECR performance to FA at elevated temperatures by
utilizing advanced carbon supports. High-end electrochemistry and
physicochemical characterizations will be used to obtain an in-depth
knowledge about the interactions between support and SnO2 and
reveal the impact of the support on the degradation mechanisms at
high temperatures in order to reduce them to a minimum. Achieving
this will allow the ECR to be coupled with alkane dehydrogenation in
a co-electrolysis setup.