Möller Tim, Filippi Michael, Brückner Sven, Ju Wen, Strasser Peter
The Electrochemical Energy, Catalysis, and Materials Science Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering Division, Technical University Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Nat Commun. 2023 Sep 14;14(1):5680. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-41278-7.
Coupled tandem electrolyzer concepts have been predicted to offer kinetic benefits to sluggish catalytic reactions thanks to their flexibility of reaction environments in each cell. Here we design, assemble, test, and analyze the first complete low-temperature, neutral-pH, cathode precious metal-free tandem CO electrolyzer cell chain. The tandem system couples an Ag-free CO-to-CO/CO electrolyzer (cell-1) to a CO/CO-to-C product electrolyzer (cell-2). Cell-1 and cell-2 incorporate selective Ni-N-C-based and Cu-based Gas Diffusion Cathodes, respectively, and operate at sustainable neutral pH conditions. Using our tandem cell system, we report strongly enhanced rates for the production of ethylene (by 50%) and alcohols (by 100%) and a sharply increased C energy efficiency (by 100%) at current densities of up to 700 mA cm compared to the single CO-to-C electrolyzer cell system approach. This study demonstrates that coupled tandem electrolyzer cell systems can offer kinetic and practical energetic benefits over single-cell designs for the production of value-added C chemicals and fuels directly from CO feeds without intermediate separation or purification.
耦合串联电解槽概念预计因其每个电解槽中反应环境的灵活性，能为缓慢的催化反应带来动力学优势。在此，我们设计、组装、测试并分析了首个完整的低温、中性pH、阴极无贵金属的串联CO电解槽电池链。该串联系统将一个无银的CO制CO/CO电解槽（电池1）与一个CO/CO制C产物电解槽（电池2）相耦合。电池1和电池2分别采用选择性的基于Ni-N-C和Cu的气体扩散阴极，并在可持续的中性pH条件下运行。使用我们的串联电池系统，我们报告称，与单CO制C电解槽电池系统方法相比，在高达700 mA cm的电流密度下，乙烯产量（提高50%）和醇产量（提高100%）大幅提高，C能量效率急剧增加（提高100%）。这项研究表明，耦合串联电解槽电池系统相对于单电池设计，在直接从CO进料生产增值C化学品和燃料而无需中间分离或纯化方面，可提供动力学和实际能量优势。
