(Energy Technology Division Research Award Address) Electrochemical CO_2 Reduction: Path Towards a Carbon Neutral Chemical Industry?

摘要

The chemical and fuel industry today relies on fossil fuels as its major feedstock and applies a variety of energy-intense thermal/catalytic processes to convert this feed into different intermediates or bulk chemicals and fuels. Many of these processes are responsible for a sizeable fraction of the anthropogenic CO_2 emissions that are contributing to global warming and associated issues such as climate change, rising sea levels, and more erratic weather patterns. In contrast, the use of CO_2 as the feedstock for the production of bulk chemicals such as CO, ethylene, and ethanol via electrochemical CO_2 reduction not only utilizes some of the CO_2 that otherwise would be emitted in the atmosphere, it also avoids the sizeable CO_2 emissions associated with many of the aforementioned energy-intense processes that use fossil fuels as the feed.