A Nature-Inspired Solution for Water Management in a Zero-Gap CO<sub>2</sub> Electrolyzer
Linlin Xu, Panagiotis Trogadas, Yang Lan, Shuxian Jiang, Shangwei Zhou, Francesco Iacoviello, Wenjia Du, Rhodri Jervis, Marc‐Olivier Coppens
Abstract
High Resolution Image Download MS PowerPoint Slide Electroreduction of carbon dioxide (CO 2 RR) holds great promise as a CO 2 emission mitigation strategy while producing valuable chemicals. This study draws inspiration from desert-dwelling lizards to design a flow-field that increases the performance of the CO 2 RR in a zero-gap CO 2 electrolyzer. It achieves a CO partial current density of 165.5 mA cm –2 at 200 mA cm –2, surpassing those of conventional parallel and serpentine flow-field designs. Unlike more complex strategies that can only partially prevent water flooding or salt precipitation, our approach achieves both, solely by modifying the cathodic flow-field, while using commercial electrocatalysts, membranes, and standard operating conditions. When doubling the cell size, the lizard-inspired serpentine flow-field significantly boosts CO production: CO selectivity is 46% and 97% higher than for a conventional serpentine flow-field at 350 mA cm –2 and 400 mA cm –2, respectively. Thus, lizard-inspired flow-field technology could provide a step-change in stable, scalable CO 2 RR, even using commercially available components for the use of CO 2 electrolyzers.