Engineering Aspects for the Design of a Bicarbonate Zero-Gap Flow Electrolyzer for the Conversion of CO to Formate.

CO electrolyzers require gaseous CO or saturated CO solutions to achieve high energy efficiency (EE) in flow reactors. However, CO capture and delivery to electrolyzers are in most cases responsible for the inefficiency of the technology. Recently, bicarbonate zero-gap flow electrolyzers have proven to convert CO directly from bicarbonate solutions, thus mimicking a CO capture medium, obtaining high Faradaic efficiency (FE) and partial current density (CD) toward carbon products.

Electroreduction of CO/CO to C Products: Process Modeling, Downstream Separation, System Integration, and Economic Analysis.

Direct electrochemical reduction of CO to C products such as ethylene is more efficient in alkaline media, but it suffers from parasitic loss of reactants due to (bi)carbonate formation. A two-step process where the CO is first electrochemically reduced to CO and subsequently converted to desired C products has the potential to overcome the limitations posed by direct CO electroreduction. In this study, we investigated the technical and economic feasibility of the direct and indirect CO conversion routes to C products.