Electroreduction of CO2to ethanol by electrochemically deposited Cu-lignin complexes on Ni foam electrodes

Debabrata Chanda; Ramato Ashu Tufa; David Aili; Suddhasatwa Basu

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/ac302b

Electroreduction of CO₂to ethanol by electrochemically deposited Cu-lignin complexes on Ni foam electrodes

Nanotechnology. 2021 Nov 12;33(5). doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac302b.

Authors

Debabrata Chanda¹, Ramato Ashu Tufa², David Aili², Suddhasatwa Basu^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi 110016, India.
² Department of Energy Conversion and Storage, Technical University of Denmark, Elektrovej 375, DK-2800 Kgs Lyngby, Denmark.
³ CSIR-Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology, Bhubaneswar 751013, India.

PMID: 34654005
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac302b

Abstract

A low cost, non-toxic and highly selective catalyst based on a Cu-lignin molecular complex is developed for CO₂electroreduction to ethanol. Ni foam (NF), Cu-Ni foam (Cu-NF) and Cu-lignin-Ni foam (Cu-lignin-NF) were prepared by a facile and reproducible electrochemical deposition method. The electrochemical CO₂reduction activity of Cu-lignin-NF was found to be higher than Cu-NF. A maximum faradaic efficiency of 23.2% with current density of 22.5 mA cm^-2was obtained for Cu-lignin-NF at -0.80 V (versus RHE) in 0.1 M Na₂SO₄towards ethanol production. The enhancement of catalytic performance is attributed to the growth of the number of active sites and the change of oxidation states of Cu and NF due to the presence of lignin.

Keywords: CO2 electro-reduction; Cu-lignin; Ni-foam; ethanol; selectivity.