Converting carbon dioxide into valuable and much needed chemicals using renewable electricity is a promising and environmentally sustainable route that mitigates greenhouse gas emissions. However, one of the long-standing challenges that limits the practical viability of this method has been the fact that only a small fraction of the CO2 is converted to usable molecules that contain two or more carbon atoms; this is due to the reaction environments typically used, which are primarily alkaline in nature.
A team of researchers, including Dr. Yanwei Lum at NUS ChBE, has recently developed a breakthrough that could overcome this long-standing challenge by using a simple salt – potassium chloride – and concentrating this near the electrodes using a novel engineering strategy. This makes it possible to convert CO2 into valuable multi-carbon molecules under strongly acidic reaction environments with unprecedented efficiencies.
You can read all about this groundbreaking strategy at:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg6582
