Metal–CO₂ Batteries at the Crossroad to Practical Energy Storage and CO₂ Recycle

Abstract

Metal–CO2 batteries show great promise in meeting the growing energy, chemical, and environmental demands of daily life and industry, because of their advantages of high flexibility and efficiency in both energy storage and CO2 recycle applications. It has been a trend that Li/Na‐CO2 and Zn/Al‐CO2 systems show different developments to achieve practical energy storage (e.g., high electricity supply) and CO2 recycling (e.g., flexible chemical production), respectively, which is often neglected. This inhibits the application of metal–CO2 batteries in maximizing energy supply and value‐added CO2 conversion. This progress report presents a critically selected overview of the individual developments of metal–CO2 batteries with emphasis on diverse fundamental origins, performance advantages, and the future of these two systems. Furthermore, the reaction pathways, particularly for catalytic materials, for the Li/Na‐CO2 and Zn/Al‐CO2 systems are discussed. Finally, the challenges of these two systems along with a hybrid Li/Na‐CO2 battery design that may simultaneously provide high operating voltages and flexible chemicals are outlined.

Orbital coupling of hetero-diatomic nickel-iron site for bifunctional electrocatalysis of CO2 reduction and oxygen evolution

“…Rechargeable zinc-CO 2 battery. Rechargeable metal-CO 2 batteries, which integrate the working principles of CO 2 RR and metal-air batteries, have recently been proposed as a new sustainable power technology with additional benefit of promoting carbon recycling [33][34][35][36][37] . With outstanding catalytic activities of CO 2 RR and OER, NiFe-DASC is desirable as the electrode catalyst in metal-CO 2 batteries.…”

Proton-assisted calcium-ion storage in aromatic organic molecular crystal with coplanar stacked structure

“…Recently, a flurry of research activity has been devoted to developing alternative battery technologies in addition to lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) based on earth-abundant elements 1 – 4 . Rechargeable calcium-ion batteries (CIBs) can offer considerable advantages including cost-effectiveness and high volumetric/gravimetric capacity (2072 mAh mL −1 and 1337 mAh g −1 ) 5 due to their high abundance and a relatively lower reduction potential (i.e., −2.87 V, −2.37 V, and −1.66 V vs. SHE for Ca/Ca 2+ , Mg/Mg 2+ , and Al/Al 3+ , respectively) 6 and the divalent electron redox properties of calcium 7 . However, current research on CIBs is still in its infancy because the reversible plating/stripping of metallic calcium is possible only with judiciously tailored nonaqueous electrolytes 8 – 11 .…”

Nitrogen‐Doped Carbon Polyhedrons Confined Fe–P Nanocrystals as High‐Efficiency Bifunctional Catalysts for Aqueous Zn−CO2 Batteries

“…Nowadays, the excessive consumption of non-renewable fossil fuels has raised global concerns about energy shortage, and the corresponding CO 2 emissions have also led to serious global warming and other environmental problems. [1,2] Aqueous metalCO 2 batteries, as a newly developed and promising with technology for energy conversion and storage integrating the utilization of carbon dioxide, have important practical significance to alleviate the problem of energy shortage and global warming. [3,4] Current metalCO 2 batteries such as LiCO 2 and NaCO 2 batteries have been developed to exhibit high energy densities and enhanced cycling performance.…”