Employing Non-Noble Metals as Catalysts for CO₂ Electroreduction

Abstract

CO2 electroreduction to fuels is one of the most viable solutions for tackling both issues of global warming and energy crises. It is due to the fact that products such as formic acid, methanol, etc. which are obtained by electroreduction of CO2 could be employed as hydrogen carriers or directly as fuels. This phenomenon attracts huge research towards the process and its bottlenecks for making it commercial. The major hurdles regarding catalysis of CO2 electroreduction process are low solubility of CO2 in aqueous solutions and low product yields. In our previous works, we have already demonstrated employment of gas diffusion electrodes for non–noble metal catalysts such as Pb, Bi and Sn. The usage of gas diffusion electrodes enables us to exploit three phase contact of CO2 gas – solid catalysts – liquid electrolyte and shows higher product (formate ion) yield. Additionally, we have also shown through another work that the ternary eutectics of these three non–metal catalysts employed exhibits higher activity for CO2 electroreduction than singular pure metals or any other binary or ternary alloyed compositions of metals. In this work, we want to exploit the conclusions from both the works and subject ternary alloy composition of Pb – Bi – Sn metals in gas diffusion electrode configuration for the process of CO2 electroreduction. Based on the previous two results, author believes that this would enable us to obtain higher product yield and hence better energy efficiency which would be a step forward towards sustainable development.