General Techno-Economic Analysis of CO2 Electrolysis Systems

Jan 19, 2018 - In this work, we briefly reviewed the current state-of-the-art CO2 reduction figures of merit, and performed an economic analysis to ca...
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A General Techno-Economic Analysis of CO Electrolysis Systems Matthew Jouny, Wesley W Luc, and Feng Jiao Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Just Accepted Manuscript • DOI: 10.1021/acs.iecr.7b03514 • Publication Date (Web): 19 Jan 2018 Downloaded from http://pubs.acs.org on January 19, 2018

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Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research

Title: A General Techno-Economic Analysis of CO2 Electrolysis Systems Matthew Jouny, Wesley Luc, Feng Jiao* Center of Catalytic Science and Technology, Department and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 USA *Corresponding author: [email protected] Abstract The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) has received significant attention in academic research, although the techno-economic prospects of the technology for the large-scale production of chemicals are unclear. In this work, we briefly reviewed the current state-of-the-art CO2 reduction figures of merit, and performed an economic analysis to calculate the end-of-life net present value (NPV) of a generalized CO2 electrolyzer system for the production of 100 tons/day of various CO2 reduction products. Under current techno-economic conditions, carbon monoxide and formic acid were the only economically viable products with NPVs of $13.5 million and $39.4 million, respectively. However, higher-order alcohols such as ethanol and npropanol could be highly promising under future conditions if reasonable electrocatalytic performance benchmarks are achieved (e.g. 300mA/cm2 and 0.5V overpotential at 70% faradaic efficiency). Herein, we established performance targets such that if these targets are achieved, electrochemical CO2 reduction for fuels and chemicals production can become a profitable option as part of the growing renewable energy infrastructure.

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1. Introduction Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have recently reached the highest levels in human history. It is widely believed that failure to curb these rising emissions could lead to potentially devastating climate change effects.1 Mitigating CO2 emissions on a global scale remains a major challenge since the global population, and subsequently the global energy usage, is projected to continue to increase. Although renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are beginning to gain more market share, fossil fuel resources will continue to be the dominate energy source through the mid-century. A major driver for this is the continued dependence of the transportation and chemical sectors on fossil fuels. For example, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated that while renewable sources will account for over 27% of electricity generation by 2040, renewable energy in the transportation and chemical sectors will only be 80%) with majority of these catalysts being Ag and Sn-based for CO and formic acid production, respectively. In the case of methanol, only 6 ACS Paragon Plus Environment

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Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research

a few catalysts were reported to be methanol selective and the reported methanol Faradaic efficiencies varied greatly from 30% to 98%. On the contrary, methane Faradaic efficiencies have been consistently low (