Science Alert September 8, 2019
Usually people reduce carbon dioxide in liquid electrolyte like salty water. The dissolved salts help convert the gas into a molecule that stores energy. Formic acid is sifted out of the thick briny soup. An international team of researchers (USA – Rice University, Harvard University, Northeastern University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Saudi Arabia) reports that continuous electrocatalytic conversion of CO2 to pure liquid fuel solutions in cells which utilize solid electrolytes, where electrochemically generated cations (such as H+) and anions (such as HCOO−) are combined to form pure product solutions without mixing with other ions. They have demonstrated production of pure HCOOH solutions with concentrations up to 12 M. So far, the process has been shown to convert about 42 percent of the electricity from a power source into a chemical form that can be used in fuel cells. They showed that the CO2 reduction cell with solid electrolytes can be modified to suit other, more complex practical applications…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Credit: Xia, et al., Nature Energy, 2019