Sustainable liquid fuels from CO2 electroreduction

Project Information

CO2RR

Grant agreement ID: 897818

DOI

10.3030/897818

Project closed

EC signature date 1 April 2020

Start date 1 July 2020

End date 30 June 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 175 572,48

EU contribution

€ 175 572,48

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CO2RR (Sustainable liquid fuels from CO2 electroreduction)

Reporting period: 2020-07-01 to 2022-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project addresses the low conversion energy efficiency between chemicals and electricity, which economically limits the wide-spread adoption of renewable energy technologies.
Renewable electricity becomes more and more cheap and accessible, and could be used to electrify industry and automobile to mitigate our dependence on fossil fuels. However, the current technology for electricity-chemicals conversion remains too low to be competitive with conventional ones. The key technological limitation lies on electrocatalysis, which is closely related to an electrified interface. It is therefore important to enhance electricity-chemical conversion (achieved via electrochemical reactions occurring at electrified interface), which requires fundamental understanding of how the structure of electrified interface impacts the electrocatalysis (i.e. conversion efficiency), and further transferring such understanding to practical applications by advancing materials and building devices.
The overall objectives are providing broad guideline for future design of electrified interface for target electrochemical reactions, and practical demonstration of electricity-chemical conversion.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The Fellow specifically focused on fundamental studies of linking electrode-electrolyte interfacial properties with the activity/selectivity of electrochemical reactions based on single-crystal electrode technique, with the goal of establishing general design guidelines for the development of advanced materials and systems to drive electricity-chemicals interconversion.
By collaborating with other institute, the Fellow designed and synthesized morphology-controlled Cu nano-catalysts and built zero-gap membrane-electrode-assembly CO2RR electrolyser.
The project research results in one publication with many other manuscript being under preparation, one conference presentation and three invited talks.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Potential impacts of this project include the promotion of global energy transformation from fossil sources to renewables, and the establishment of new economic models based on sustainable energy, such as the hydrogen economics. Data collected in this project can be also important reference for techno-economic analysis for renewable energy techniques.

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