Plastic from CO <sub>2</sub> , Water, and Electricity: Tandem Electrochemical CO <sub>2</sub> Reduction and Thermochemical Ethylene‐CO Copolymerization
Abstract
Abstract Converting CO 2 into industrially useful products is an appealing strategy for utilization of an abundant chemical resource. Electrochemical CO 2 reduction (eCO 2 R) offers a pathway to convert CO 2 into CO and ethylene, using renewable electricity. These products can be efficiently copolymerized by organometallic catalysts to generate polyketones. However, the conditions for these reactions are very different, presenting the challenge of coupling microenvironments typically encountered for the transformation of CO 2 into highly complex but desirable multicarbon products. Herein, we present a system to produce polyketone plastics entirely derived from CO 2 and water, where both the CO and C 2 H 4 intermediates are produced by eCO 2 R. In this system, a combination of Cu and Ag gas diffusion electrodes is used to generate a gas mixture with nearly equal concentrations of CO and C 2 H 4 , and a recirculatory CO 2 reduction loop is used to reach concentrations of above 11% each, leading to a current‐to‐polymer efficiency of up to 51% and CO 2 utilization of 14%.
Article Details
Authors (5)
Maxim Zhelyabovskiy
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering California Institute of Technology Pasadena CA 91125 USA
Hyuk‐Joon Jung
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry University of California Los Angeles Los Angeles CA 90095 USA
Paula L. Diaconescu
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, 607 Charles E. Young Drive East, Los Angeles, California 90095, United States
Jonas C. Peters
Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
Theodor Agapie
Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering