Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3E4, Canada.
Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Science. 2019 Apr 26;364(6438). doi: 10.1126/science.aav3506.
Electrocatalytic transformation of carbon dioxide (CO) and water into chemical feedstocks offers the potential to reduce carbon emissions by shifting the chemical industry away from fossil fuel dependence. We provide a technoeconomic and carbon emission analysis of possible products, offering targets that would need to be met for economically compelling industrial implementation to be achieved. We also provide a comparison of the projected costs and CO emissions across electrocatalytic, biocatalytic, and fossil fuel-derived production of chemical feedstocks. We find that for electrosynthesis to become competitive with fossil fuel-derived feedstocks, electrical-to-chemical conversion efficiencies need to reach at least 60%, and renewable electricity prices need to fall below 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. We discuss the possibility of combining electro- and biocatalytic processes, using sequential upgrading of CO as a representative case. We describe the technical challenges and economic barriers to marketable electrosynthesized chemicals.
将二氧化碳（CO）和水电化学转化为化学原料有潜力减少碳排放，使化学工业摆脱对化石燃料的依赖。我们对可能的产品进行了技术经济和碳排放分析，提出了实现经济上有吸引力的工业实施所需达到的目标。我们还比较了电催化、生物催化和化石燃料衍生生产化学原料的预计成本和 CO 排放。我们发现，要使电合成与化石燃料衍生的原料竞争，电-化学转化效率需要至少达到 60%，并且可再生电力价格需要降至每千瓦时 4 美分以下。我们讨论了结合电催化和生物催化过程的可能性，以 CO 的连续升级为例。我们描述了可销售的电合成化学品面临的技术挑战和经济障碍。
