Continuously Producing Highly Concentrated and Pure Acetic Acid Aqueous Solution via Direct Electroreduction of CO.

It is crucial to achieve continuous production of highly concentrated and pure C chemicals through the electrochemical CO reduction reaction (eCORR) for artificial carbon cycling, yet it has remained unattainable until now. Despite one-pot tandem catalysis (dividing the eCORR to C into two catalytical reactions of CO to CO and CO to C) offering the potential for significantly enhancing reaction efficiency, its mechanism remains unclear and its performance is unsatisfactory. Herein, we selected different CO-to-CO catalysts and CO-to-acetate catalysts to construct several tandem catalytic systems for the eCORR to acetic acid. Among them, a tandem catalytic system comprising a covalent organic framework () and a metal-organic framework () as CO-to-CO and CO-to-acetate catalysts, respectively, exhibited a faradaic efficiency of 51.2% with a current density of 410 mA cm and an ultrahigh acetate yield rate of 2.72 mmol m s under neutral conditions. After electrolysis for 200 h, 1 cm working electrode can continuously produce 20 mM acetic acid aqueous solution with a relative purity of 95+%. Comprehensive studies revealed that the performance of tandem catalysts is influenced not only by the CO supply-demand relationship and electron competition between the two catalytic processes in the one-pot tandem system but also by the performance of the CO-to-C catalyst under diluted CO conditions.