Improving Catalysis for CO2 Electroreduction By Employing Various Catalyst-Supports
Authors: Kumawat Adhidesh S. 
Published: December 2020

Catalysis is the key to the success of catalytic processes. Regarding catalysis of CO2 electroreduction process, improvisation of catalysis could lead to making the process industrially sustainable. Sustainability of CO2 electroreduction process would result in providing better solutions for issues of global warming as well as energy crises. Numerous researches have yielded the capability to produce fuels and useful chemicals by the method of electroreduction of CO2. The major hurdle for improvising the rate of reduction of CO2 molecules is the stability of the molecule. This demands the operating conditions to be relatively extreme. The limitations of catalyst to operate at the extreme conditions become vital in that scenario. Additionally, activating CO2 molecules at relatively lower activation energies in terms of operating conditions would be beneficial for improving the process. Generally, the catalysts utilized for electroreducing CO2 are supported nanoparticles. Hence, modification in the support utilized for the catalyst could also result in lowering the activation energy required for CO2 electroreduction process.

In our previous works, an increase in catalytic activity has been shown for the nanoparticle form of metals utilized as catalyst in comparison to metals employed in the form of bulk sheets.1,2 This inference indicates towards that fact that catalyst employed as nanoparticles could yield higher rate of CO2 electroreduction in comparison to bulk form of catalysts such as sheets. It is evident by several existing research works that the catalysts in the supported form could be utilized to a greater extent than the non-supported or sole metal form of catalyst. Thus, in this work, we want to explore the effect of various catalyst supports on the extent of electrocatalysis of CO2. We propose utilization of various metal oxides such as CeO2 and ZrO2 to be employed as catalyst supports as a replacement or in combination with Vulcan carbon, which was already utilized as catalyst supports in our previous works. The choice of metal oxides such as CeO2 and ZrO2 can enhance the catalytic activity by several ways such as exhibiting oxygen vacancies or interacting with the CO2
3–6. Thus, author believes that employment of different catalyst supports would enable us to investigate and obtain a suitable catalyst – support combination that would be capable of electroreducing CO2 at an enhanced rate. Thus, this work could help in improving the energy efficiency with improved product obtaining rate for the process of CO2 electroreduction and result in sustainable development of catalysis.

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