Enhanced Electrochemical Methanation of Carbon Dioxide with a Dispersible Nanoscale Copper Catalyst

Abstract

Although the vast majority of hydrocarbon fuels and products are presently derived from petroleum, there is much interest in the development of routes for synthesizing these same products by hydrogenating CO₂. The simplest hydrocarbon target is methane, which can utilize existing infrastructure for natural gas storage, distribution, and consumption. Electrochemical methods for methanizing CO₂ currently suffer from a combination of low activities and poor selectivities. We demonstrate that copper nanoparticles supported on glassy carbon (n-Cu/C) achieve up to 4 times greater methanation current densities compared to high-purity copper foil electrodes. The n-Cu/C electrocatalyst also exhibits an average Faradaic efficiency for methanation of 80% during extended electrolysis, the highest Faradaic efficiency for room-temperature methanation reported to date. We find that the level of copper catalyst loading on the glassy carbon support has an enormous impact on the morphology of the copper under catalytic conditions and the resulting Faradaic efficiency for methane. The improved activity and Faradaic efficiency for methanation involves a mechanism that is distinct from what is generally thought to occur on copper foils. Electrochemical data indicate that the early steps of methanation on n-Cu/C involve a pre-equilibrium one-electron transfer to CO₂ to form an adsorbed radical, followed by a rate-limiting non-electrochemical step in which the adsorbed CO₂ radical reacts with a second CO₂ molecule from solution. These nanoscale copper electrocatalysts represent a first step toward the preparation of practical methanation catalysts that can be incorporated into membrane-electrode assemblies in electrolyzers.

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