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Investigating transport of ethanol within hydrocarbon anion exchange membranes for CO2 electrolysis

Resource type
Thesis type
(Thesis) M.Sc.
Date created
2024-04-15
Authors/Contributors
Abstract
A kilowatt-hour produced using renewable energy is rapidly becoming cheaper than equivalent fossil fuel energy production methods. Simultaneously, CO2 capture technologies are approaching commercialization and are projected to give industry access to a surplus of CO2. What should be done with abundant clean energy and CO2? CO2 electrolysis could be the answer; it is a promising technology that creates commodity chemicals like ethanol, methanol, ethylene, and formic acid from CO2. Several inefficiencies need to be addressed to advance the technology to commercial relevancy. Within alkaline CO2 electrolysers, newly formed products diffuse into and across the anion exchange membrane, which is shown to negatively effect the membrane. Five hydrocarbon membranes were compared giving insight into how effectively different membrane chemistries exclude ethanol. Diffusion-ordered spectroscopy and permeability tests were used for measuring the diffusion coefficients of ethanol within these membranes. Crosslinking and zwitterionic functional groups showed potential to abate ethanol diffusion.
Document
Extent
88 pages.
Identifier
etd23005
Copyright statement
Copyright is held by the author(s).
Permissions
This thesis may be printed or downloaded for non-commercial research and scholarly purposes.
Supervisor or Senior Supervisor
Thesis advisor: Holdcroft, Steven
Language
English
Member of collection
Download file Size
etd23005.pdf 2.48 MB

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