Solid State Protonic Electrosynthesis of Zero Carbon Fuels

固体氧化物电解槽利用可再生能源的电力，利用高温运行的热力学优势，高效地从蒸汽中产生高纯度氢气。这一点也同样适用于二氧化碳减排。固体质子氧化物电解法是一种有吸引力的替代方法，因为水可以被送入阳极室，在那里水被氧化产生氧气和质子，在阴极产生氢，当二氧化碳被送入阴极时，它被电子和/或氢还原以产生受控的合成气。通过仔细控制组成和工艺，成功的质子电解液可以同时提供性能和稳定性，可能在300℃以下。以前的工作表明，这些质子导电电解质(如BA(Ce，Y，Zr)O_3)可以提供良好的水-气变换活性，甚至可以直接转化为甲烷。最近的工作表明，这些材料可以掺入过渡金属，如铜和镍，从而在还原时产生非常有趣的出溶结构。这提供了在化学或电化学还原时用例如铜和/或镍的金属纳米颗粒装饰水气变换活性钙钛矿表面的可能性。在这个项目中，我们试图实现这样的质子电解槽与脱除的电催化剂，开发提供稀薄电解液的结构，使其能够在中等温度下高效运行。我们将针对具有良好活性的金属进行碳键活化，并将寻求进行潜在零碳燃料的直接电合成。

Solid oxide electrolysis cells generate high purity hydrogen from steam at high efficiency using electricity from renewable sources, exploiting thermodynamic benefits of high temperature operation. This has similarly been applied to CO2 reduction. Solid Protonic Oxide Electrolysis is an attractive alternative as water can be fed into the anode compartment where water is oxidized to yield oxygen and protons to yield hydrogen at the cathode and when CO2 is fed to the cathode it is reduced by electrons and/or hydrogen to yield controlled syngas. With careful control of composition and processing successful protonic electrolysers can be achieved to deliver both performance and stability, possibly at temperatures down to 300oC.Previous work has shown that these proton conducting electrolytes (eg Ba(Ce,Y,Zr)O3) can deliver good water gas shift activity and indeed direct conversion to methane . Recent work has shown that these materials can be doped with transition metals such Cu and Ni to yield quite intriguing exsolution structures on reduction . This offers the potential to decorate Water Gas Shift active perovskite surfaces with metallic nanoparticles of eg Cu and/or Ni upon chemical or electrochemical reduction .In this project we seek to implement such proton electrolysers with exolved electrocatalysts, developing structures that afford thin electrolytes that will allow efficient operation at moderate temperature. We will target metals with good activity for carbon bond activation and will seek to perform direct electrosynthesis of potential zero carbon fuels.