Laboratoire de la science et de l'ingenierie de l'energie renouvelable

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2022 roadmap on low temperature electrochemical CO2 reduction

Etienne Boutin, Raffaella Buonsanti, Sophia Haussener, Xuan Liu, Ming Ma, Ludmilla Steier, Xiaoyan Wang

Electrochemical CO2 reduction (CO2R) is an attractive option for storing renewable electricity and for the sustainable production of valuable chemicals and fuels. In this roadmap, we review recent progress in fundamental understanding, catalyst development, and in engineering and scale-up. We discuss the outstanding challenges towards commercialization of electrochemical CO2R technology: energy efficiencies, selectivities, low current densities, and stability. We highlight the opportunities in establishing rigorous standards for benchmarking performance, advances in in operando characterization, the discovery of new materials towards high value products, the investigation of phenomena across multiple-length scales and the application of data science towards doing so. We hope that this collective perspective sparks new research activities that ultimately bring us a step closer towards establishing a low- or zero-emission carbon cycle.

IOP Publishing Ltd2022

A data-science approach to predict the heat capacity of nanoporous materials

Mehrdad Asgari, Özge Kadioglu, Seyedmohamad Moosavi, Elias Moubarak, Balázs Álmos Novotny, Daniele Ongari, Andres Adolfo Ortega Guerrero, Berend Smit

The heat capacity of a material is a fundamental property of great practical importance. For example, in a carbon capture process, the heat required to regenerate a solid sorbent is directly related to the heat capacity of the material. However, for most materials suitable for carbon capture applications, the heat capacity is not known, and thus the standard procedure is to assume the same value for all materials. In this work, we developed a machine learning approach, trained on density functional theory simulations, to accurately predict the heat capacity of these materials, that is, zeolites, metal-organic frameworks and covalent-organic frameworks. The accuracy of our prediction is confirmed with experimental data. Finally, for a temperature swing adsorption process that captures carbon from the flue gas of a coal-fired power plant, we show that for some materials, the heat requirement is reduced by as much as a factor of two using the correct heat capacity.

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

Solar fuel processing: Comparative mini-review on research, technology development, and scaling

Sophia Haussener

Solar energy provides an unprecedented potential as a renewable and sustainable energy resource and will substantially reshape our future energy economy. It is not only useful in producing electricity but also (high-temperature) heat and fuel, both required for non-electrifiable energy services. Fuels are particularly valuable as they are energy dense and storable, and they can also act as a feedstock for the chemical industry. Technical pathways for the processing of solar fuels include thermal pathways (e.g. solar thermochemistry), photo pathways (e.g. photoelectrochemistry), and combinations thereof. A review of theoretical limits indicates that all technical solar fuel processing pathways have the potential for competitive solar-to-fuel efficiencies (>10 %) but require very different operating conditions (e.g. temperature levels or oxygen partial pressures), making them complementary and highly versatile for process integration. Progress in photoelectrochemical devices and solar thermochemical reactors over the last 50 + years are summarized, showing encouraging trends in terms of performance, technological viability, and scaling.

2022