Surface Polarization, Evolution, and Reconstruction for CO2 Reduction

The exploitation of fossil fuels to sustain human activities have determined a steep increase in CO2 atmospheric concentration, thus leading to climate changes.

While photovoltaic devices and wind power plants provide sustainable alternatives for energy supply, chemical commodities are still mainly produced from fossil fuels.

The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide enables generation of chemicals from CO2, water, and renewable energy, concurring to reduce CO2 concentration and store excess renewable energy.

In the SuPERCO2 project, I aim to manufacture electrochemical cells achieving high performance and stability for converting CO2 to ethanol, ethylene, and further C3+ hydrocarbons.

In fact, Cu-based materials, the state-of-the-art catalysts for converting CO2 to multi-carbon molecules, suffer low performance and poor long-term stability at large electrode sizes, thus limiting the industrial uptake of the technology.

Besides, the lack of effective data sharing platforms prevent parallel optimization of CO2 reduction catalysts by different stakeholders, whereas poor understanding of the many interdependent phenomena which affects the process further prevents its industrial scale up.

To overcome these limitations, I will carry out three main tasks: the search for improved catalysts, the creation of an open-source database to store experimental data, and the development of a multi-scale platform to model the processes involved.

Overall, SuPERCO2 will contribute in the short term to fundamental insights in the field of CO2 reduction, in the mid to long term to a fossil-free production of multi-carbon molecules within European Union.

Besides, by including academic (Politecnico di Torino, cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne) and industrial (Teijin Materials) stakeholders, the project will provide the researcher with an all-inclusive profile in the field of electrochemistry.