Energy Conversion at the Interface

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The primary objective of my research program is to develop an electrolyzer capable of using electricity to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into useful products (i.e., CO or hydrocarbons) with high efficiency and selectivity. Our mission is motivated by the strikingly low cost of renewable electricity available today, and the need to develop economically viable storage solutions in order to support such low prices in perpetuity. The electrolytic reduction of CO2 using excess renewable electricity is compelling because the infrastructure is already in place to handle the fuel and chemical products. This proposal is agnostic to the subject of which specific outputs of CO2 electrolysis should be pursued most vehemently (we are engaged in a market study which will provide clarity to this challenge), but we seek fundamental science and technology advances that are required for any type of CO2 electrolyzer to fit in a supply chain. This proposal describes the design of new electrocatalysts, analytical tools, and electrolyzer flow cells to help us achieve our larger mission of realizing a commercially viable CO2 electrolyzer. Our objectives take advantage of the diverse range of chemical, engineering, modeling and analytical expertise within my program, and will draw upon many collaborative relationships with academic and industrial partners. The first section of this proposal is motivated by the need to develop robust property-activity relationships for multi-metallic CO2 electrocatalysts. We will, for example, attempt to link composition, lattice strain and mixing patterns of alloys to catalytic selectivity, efficiency and durability. A successful outcome of these projects is the ability to deliberately tune the conversion of CO2 towards a specific product (e.g., CO, ethylene, propanol). The following section outlines our plans for building novel preparative and analytical tools to rapidly advance the rate of materials discovery and systems optimization. We plan to leverage materials printing techniques coupled to machine learning tools to produce, manage and process large data sets involving the testing of >106 compositions annually. Tools tailored for investigating how strain at the atomic level (e.g., lattice expansion) through to the macroscopic level (e.g., cracks) of catalytic films are proposed, as is the rapid prototyping of electrolyzer flow cell components. The last section will apply the learnings from the previous two vignettes to aid the design and development of a pilot CO2 electrolyzer system. This research will build on a gas-phase electrolyzer system that we recently designed to achieve high rates of CO2-to-CO conversion.The development of innovative technologies that reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations is a priority for Canada, and the successful deployment of a commercial CO2 electrolyzer described in this proposal will contribute directly to this initiative.