Scale up of reactors for carbon dioxide reduction

Abstract

In recent times there has been a great deal of interest in the conversion of carbon dioxide into more useful chemical compounds. On the other hand, the translation of these developments in electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide from the laboratory bench to practical scale remains an underexplored topic. Here we examine some of the major challenges, demonstrating some promising strategies towards such scale-up, including increased electrode area and stacking of electrode pairs in different configurations. We observed that increasing the electrode area from 1 to 10 cm2 led to only a 4% drop in current density, with similarly small penalties realised when stacking sub-cells together.

CO2 conversion to CO via plasma and electrolysis: a techno-economic and energy cost analysis

“…electrolysis systems and significant capital investment have limited the study of continuous large-scale implementation. 103 This is relevant to address because scaled-up electrolysers often exhibit different mass transfer and reaction kinetics from their lab-scale counterparts, leading to performance disparities. [101][102][103] As the cell surface area expands, ensuring efficient mass and charge transport across the larger surface becomes challenging, potentially causing uneven reactant distribution, increased ohmic losses, and limited catalyst material utilisation.…”

“…103 This is relevant to address because scaled-up electrolysers often exhibit different mass transfer and reaction kinetics from their lab-scale counterparts, leading to performance disparities. [101][102][103] As the cell surface area expands, ensuring efficient mass and charge transport across the larger surface becomes challenging, potentially causing uneven reactant distribution, increased ohmic losses, and limited catalyst material utilisation. 86,101,104 Such challenges hinder the broader adoption of CO2R, primarily due to diminished current density and FE.…”

“…86 To enhance mass and charge transport efficiency, strategies encompass configurations like H-and microfluidic-type electrolysers, optimized flow channel design, GDE, and the integration of ionic liquids-based electrolytes to mitigate solubility issues. [101][102][103] Among these strategies, the implementation of GDE in upscaling lab-scale experiments has shown promise across various studies, although these studies have concluded that the high performance of the upscaled GDE-based device is not as good as its smaller counterpart. 86,103-107 GDE-based electrolysis still holds considerable upscaling potential.…”

A comprehensive modeling for the CO2 electroreduction to CO

“…In this framework, in order to reduce the carbon accumulation in the atmosphere, the research community has been focusing its attention on the so-called carbon capture and utilization technologies [3]. In particular, electrochemistry is among the most promising routes for the carbon dioxide conversion into fuels through the CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR) approach, thanks to several factors: mild working conditions in terms of pressure and temperature, repeatability of the process, use of non-toxic green reagents as electrolytes, up-scalability [4] and the possibility of the integration with photovoltaics for the sustainability of the device [5][6][7][8].…”