Publication date: 6th November 2020
Increased levels of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere, originating from excessive anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, are believed to be the main cause of global warming [1]. The electrochemical CO2 reduction, however, provides a viable option for reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions, while at the same time closing the carbon cycle, by selectively converting CO2 to for example formic acid. Formic acid is a valuable commodity chemical, not only because of its application in several chemical processes, such as textiles, pharmaceuticals and food chemicals, but also because of its potential as a hydrogen carrier [2].
Over the last decade, the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide towards formic acid has been studied extensively and several promising Cu/Sn electrocatalysts have already been reported [3]. Despite the reported high Faradaic efficiencies, the stability and activity of these state-of-the-art electrocatalysts and the contribution of the supporting material remains insufficiently studied.
In this work, we investigate the influence of the carbon support on the stability, current density (activity) and Faradaic efficiency, during the electrochemical reduction of CO2 towards formic acid. This is done by comparing the performance of both unsupported- and carbon-supported Cu/SnO2 core-shell electrocatalysts for the CO2 reduction, through multiple chronoamperometric measurements, as this allows ranking the electrocatalysts with respect to their selectivity in function of applied potential. Furthermore, these catalysts were evaluated at industrially relevant conditions, in our in-house designed electrolyzer, revealing a good stability compared to literature. The supporting material is believed to play a key role in the enhancement of the stability and activity of our Cu/SnO2 core-shell electrocatalysts.
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