Electrolysis of medium chain carboxylic acids to aviation fuel at technical scale

For mobility, especially in aviation, cargo weight and volume of the energ y vector are substantially more limited than in any other form of transportation. Therefore, ener g y vectors with high mass and volume specific energ y density are needed, for which carbon based liquid fuels are unmatched. Concurrently, there is an imperative of deriving these f uels from non-fossi l sources. Here, we show the scale-up of the production of aviation drop-in f uel-like mixtures (mainly n-decane) that are obtained by Kolbe electrolysis of mediu m chain carboxylic acids (n-hexanoic acid), which can be derived from biomass. We increased the scale to 1 L volume and 100 cm2 electrode surface area within a single stack electrolysis cel l allowing straightforward numbering-up. The ob-tained electrolysis performance is unprecedented at technical scale with a maximum n-decane production rate of 0.73 g L � 1h � 1 cm � 2, a selectivity for n-decane between 76.3 % and 97.8 % and Coulombic efficiencies up to 68 %.