Electrochemical Behavior of CO2 Reduction Reaction on Copper Phosphide Catalyst using in-situ ATR-SEIRAS

Abstract

Use of electrochemical method for reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) convert into valueable organic compounds, is a great solution to solve the problem of CO2 accumulation. The most advantage of electrochemical conversion is to elect reaction to produce a few organic compounds from carbon dioxide depending to types of catalyst. Among many types of catalyst, metal catalysts based on Copper element or alloy metals offers the route to synthesize multi-carbon fuels and chemicals from CO2 (e.g., ethylene, ethanol and n-propanol). In this study, Copper Phosphide was determined by one of the candidate to solve the problem and it was synthesized by oleate method and used as a catalyst in a near Zero-gap CO2 gas-phase electrolytic cell for CO2 reduction reaction at ambient temperature and pressure. By using a hydrophobic gas diffusion layer (GDL), polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) treated, exhibited the formation of three-phase interphase during the CO2 reduction reaction. The mechanism of the reactions, verified by the onset point of CO adsorption with ATR-SEIRAS, in-situ surface analysis, which is the intermediate of most products by CO2 reduction reaction. GC-MS and UV-Vis equipment was used tool to verify gas/liquid product analysis. Their results show that multi-carbon fuels produced in this reaction.