Exploring Electrochemical Flow-Cell Designs and Parameters for CO2 Reduction to Formate under Industrially Relevant Conditions

Potassium formate can be considered an environmentally friendly and low-corrosion deicing material. Herein we explore and develop electrochemical solutions for on-site formate production from CO under ambient conditions. We screen a variety of cathode catalysts in both H-type and gas-diffusion flow-type cells, and explore several possible flow-cell device configurations with various electrolytes and membrane candidates. We demonstrate a cell capable of industrially relevant current densities (>= 200 mA cm(-2)) while maintaining faradaic efficiency of 95% for formate and electrochemical energy efficiency >20%, and compare our results to the state-of-the-art system in the literature.