Electrosynthesis of Ethanol from CO2

低成本、低碳电力的出现引起了人们对将电力转化为化学物质，特别是用于二氧化碳利用和可变电力储存的合成燃料的极大兴趣。在选择性、高效地将二氧化碳转化为CO方面取得了重大进展，大规模示范工厂上线。然而，乙醇等价值更高的含氧物的电合成尚未超过实验室规模。乙醇是一种液体燃料，可以与汽油混合，在乘用车上运行内燃机。使用二氧化碳作为能源，可以大大降低燃料的碳强度。此外，从二氧化碳生产乙醇不需要大量的农田和水来生产玉米乙醇。在这个项目中，我们将重点放在二氧化碳和可再生电力的电催化合成乙醇上。为了实现我们的目标，该项目将分为两个主要目标：催化剂设计和系统工程。对于催化剂的开发，我们将使用计算和实验相结合的方法来了解二氧化碳合成乙醇的途径，以便设计高选择性的催化剂。在系统工程方面，我们将专门设计一个小型流动电池系统，以实现液体燃料产品的高生产率。然后，我们将致力于扩大到每天能够生产10 L乙醇的微型中试装置。该项目的最终结果将是一个可以将可再生能源、二氧化碳和水作为输入电合成乙醇的系统。通过这一项目，该技术将充分降低风险，用于开发中试工厂设施。

The emergence of low-cost, low-carbon electricity has resulted in a significant interest in power-to-chemicals, particularly synthetic fuels, for utilization of CO2 and storage of variable electricity. Significant advances have been made in the selective and efficient conversion of CO2 to CO, with large-scale demonstration plants coming online. However, the electrosynthesis of higher valued oxygenates such as ethanol has yet to be demonstrated beyond lab scale. Ethanol is a liquid fuel that can be blended with gasoline to operate combustion engines in passenger vehicles. By using CO2 as the source, the carbon intensity of the fuel can be greatly reduced. Furthermore, ethanol generated from CO2 does not require large amounts of cropland and water to produce, as is the case with corn-derived ethanol.In this project, we will focus on the electrocatalytic synthesis of ethanol from CO2 and renewable electricity. To achieve our goal, the project will be divided into two main aims: catalyst design and system engineering. For catalyst development, we will use a combined computational and experimental approach to understand the pathway of ethanol synthesis from CO2 in order to design highly selective catalysts. For systems engineering, we will design a bench-scale flow cell system specifically to achieve high productivity for liquid fuel products.We will then work on scaling up to a micro-pilot unit capable of producing 10 L of ethanol per day. The end result of this project will be a system that can take renewable energy, CO2 and water as inputs to electrosynthesize ethanol. Through this project, the technology will be sufficiently derisked for the development of a pilot plant facility.