Xu, Linlin;
Trogadas, Panagiotis;
Lan, Yang;
Jiang, Shuxian;
Zhou, Shangwei;
Iacoviello, Francesco;
Du, Wenjia;
... Coppens, Marc-Olivier; + view all
(2025)
A Nature-Inspired Solution for Water Management in a Zero-Gap CO₂ Electrolyzer.
ACS Energy Letters
, 10
(7)
pp. 3081-3088.
10.1021/acsenergylett.5c01243.
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Abstract
Electroreduction of carbon dioxide (CO2RR) holds great promise as a CO2 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 CO2RR in a zero-gap CO2 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 CO2RR, even using commercially available components for the use of CO2 electrolyzers.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A Nature-Inspired Solution for Water Management in a Zero-Gap CO₂ Electrolyzer |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1021/acsenergylett.5c01243 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.5c01243 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2025 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This publication is licensed under CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Electrical Properties, Electrocatalysts, Precipitation, Salts, Selectivity |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Chemical Engineering |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10213997 |
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