Industrial CO2 electrolysis via electrochemical CO2 reduction has achieved progress in alkaline solutions, while the same reaction in acidic solution remains challenging because of severe hydrogen evolution side reactions, acid corrosion, and low target product selectivity. Herein, an industrial acidic CO2 electrolysis to pure HCOOH system is realized in a proton-exchange-membrane electrolyzer using an acid-tolerant Bi-based metal-organic framework guided by a Pourbaix diagram. Significantly, the Faradaic efficiency of HCOOH synthesis reaches 95.10% at a large current density of 400 mA/cm2 with a high CO2 single-pass conversion efficiency of 64.91%. Moreover, the proton-exchange-membrane device also achieves an industrial-level current density of 250 mA/cm2 under a relatively low voltage of 3.5 V for up to 100 h with a Faradaic efficiency of 93.5% for HCOOH production, which corresponds to an energy consumption of 200.65 kWh/kmol, production rate of 12.1 mmol/m2/s, and an energy conversion efficiency of 38.2%. These results will greatly aid the contemporary research moving toward commercial implementation and success of CO2 electrolysis technology.
18 May 2017 in Macromolecular Materials and Engineering
The efficient electrochemical CO2 reduction to C2+ products at high current densities remains a significant challenge. Here we show inherently hydrophobic and hierarchically porous Cu supraparticles comprising sub-10 nm Cu constituent particles for ampere-level CO2-to-C2+ electrosynthesis. These supraparticles feature abundant grain boundaries for high C2+ selectivity, coupled with interconnected mesopores and interparticle macropore cavities to enhance the accessibility of the active sites and mass transfer, breaking the trade-off between activity and mass transfer in Cu-based catalysts. Moreover, the intrinsic hydrophobicity of the supraparticles mitigates the water-flooding issue of catalytic layer in flow cells, improving the stability at high current densities. Consequently, the Cu supraparticles achieve ampere-level CO2 electrolysis up to 3.2 A cm-2 with a C2+ Faradaic efficiency of 74.9% (compared to 1.21 A cm-2 and 55.4% for Cu nanoparticles) and maintain stability at 1 A cm-2 for over 100 h. This work provides profound insights into the effect of the coupling of mass transfer and catalytic reaction under a high current and presents a corresponding solution by superstructure design.
Rapid droplet shedding from surfaces is fundamentally interesting and important in numerous applications such as anti‐icing, anti‐fouling, dropwise condensation, and electricity generation. Recent efforts have demonstrated the complete rebound or pancake bouncing of impinging droplets by tuning the physicochemical properties of surfaces and applying external control, however, enabling sessile droplets to jump off surfaces in a bottom‐to‐up manner is challenging. Here, the rapid jumping of sessile droplets, even cold droplets, in a pancake shape is reported by engineering superhydrophobic magnetically responsive blades arrays. This largely unexplored droplet behavior, termed as pancake jumping, exhibits many advantages such as short interaction time and high energy conversion efficiency. The critical conditions for the occurrence of this new phenomenon are also identified. This work provides a new toolkit for the attainment of well‐controlled and active steering of both sessile and impacting droplets for a wide range of applications.
19 November 2019 in Science China Technological Sciences