ELECTRA

While one cannot longer ignore CO₂ electrolysis as a potential, partial solution to curb the atmospheric CO₂ concentration, current CO₂ electrolysis setups are still limited to TRL4-5. This means that the technology is far from ready for industrial implementation. It is the aim of this project to develop a TRL6 CO₂ electrolysis plant, a testing facility unique in Flanders, and utilize it to evaluate electrolyzer technology under industrially relevant conditions. Flanders currently lacks such a setup, impeding technological progress and limiting researchers’ possibility to answer the most urgent questions from industry. Indeed, in the past ELCAT has taken part in multiple MOT projects and the recurring questions always revolved around up-scaling, impact of impurities, etc, and will thus finally be answered. The gained insights will allow to develop novel reactor components that can sustain these conditions and lift the electrolyzer performance to current densities > 300 mA.cm^-² and energy efficiency > 30% for > 1000h and exploiting realistic, industrially available CO₂ feeds. 

To this extend, following main goals are set:

1. Developing a pilot scale CO₂ electrolysis stack for the production of CO/formate at industrially relevant conditions (current density above > 300 mA.cm^-², 60°C, total electrode area > 1 m²) and utilizing realistic CO₂ streams (including O₂, SO_x, NO_x, etc.); 

2. Extend CO₂ electrolyzer performance to > 1000 hours by mitigating the most prominent failure mechanism through improved reactor and component design;

Achieving these goals will result in the construction of a unique test facility, that allows bridging the gap between academy and industry and bring CO₂ electrolysis closer to implementation. We foresee that the facility can be placed in BlueApp, to which ELCAT has access, and made accessible to third parties once the project has been completed to test their components. 

Remarkable advances have recently been booked with CO₂ flow electrolyzers significantly improving performance up to industrially relevant levels. Nevertheless, constructing large size and multilayer stack CO₂ electrolyzers is missing whereas this is required if they are to be exploited to remove significant fractions of CO₂. Indeed, when comparing the CO₂ output of a medium-size factory, i.e. hundreds of kilos of CO₂ per hour, with the current transformation rate of a typical electrolyzer available at ELCAT, i.e. barely 100 gram of CO₂ per hour, it is clear that further enhancing the current density alone will not allow us to reach the required hourly CO₂ conversions indicating that up-scaling is essential. The importance of ELECTRA and its target is thus obviously highly relevant and timely especially considering the additional challenges that could play at higher currents and at larger scale. 

Since both the market size and the economic potential is larger for CO than for formic acid, it was chosen for discussing the strategic importance for Flanders. Currently, CO is produced in blast furnaces through incomplete combustion and emits 1.57 kg CO₂ per kg of CO. It is clear that renewable alternatives are required to decrease this CO₂ emission or to even become a CO₂ consumer. In this respect, a recent TEA has shown that CO₂ electrolysis has the potential to become carbon neutral or even a CO₂ sink. 

Moreover, we believe that since comparable alternatives developing CO₂ electrolyzer demonstrator plants, albeit not as advanced as ELECTRA, are being developed in neighboring countries it is important for Flanders’ chemical industry to also invest in up-scaling this technology to remain competitive. Finally, we believe the project outcome is of industrial significance and several interested sectors can be identified going from CO₂ emitters to component manufacturers to electrolyzer manufacturers and even to end users of CO and/or formate. We believe the technology could replace existing technologies while at the same time establishing a new market (e.g. electrolyzer development). ELECTRA has two major valorization objectives to ensure their uptake in the market in the future: 

1. Electrochemical conversion of CO₂ to CO/HCOOH with a current density above 300 mA.cm^-², stable operation for over 1000h at a large scale > 1 m² active area and utilizing realistic CO₂ streams. 

2. To develop a demonstrator plant that allows other partners (both industrial and academic) to test novel electrolyzer components and at large scale and under industrially relevant conditions. 

Finally, it is clear that up-scaling and improving the CO₂ electrolysis technology in ELECTRA will result in a significant increase in the CO₂ reduction potential. By increasing the current cell area from around 400 cm² to > 1 m² while maintaining comparable performance levels, the CO₂ reduction potential of a single electrolyzer will increase by a factor of 25. Additionally, if a complete shift from the industrial CO production process to CO₂ electrolysis could be made, there would be a potential CO₂ capture potential of up to 315 Gt. Obviously, CO₂ electrolysis alone will not suffice to substitute the whole market.