Highly‐Efficient CO2 Electromethanation with Extremely Low Overpotentials on Pt/C Catalysts: Strategic Design of Multi‐Potential‐Step Method

Abstract

Abstract This paper proposes a new idea for dramatically increasing the efficiency of CO2 reduction to CH4 at Pt/C electrocatalysts with negligibly low overpotentials. Pt catalysts have typically been disregarded in favor of other metal catalysts for CO2 reduction due to their poor performances. However, our strategically‐designed, multi‐potential‐step method, using a membrane electrode assembly with Pt/C catalysts, allows CO2 to be electrocatalytically converted to CH4 at close to the theoretical electrode potential with a net faradaic efficiency of 59.8±9.7 %. This approach is relevant and important because it provides a method of simultaneously ameliorating CO2 buildup and generating useful products.

Keywords

• CH4 production
• CO2 reduction
• faradaic efficiency
• membrane electrode assembly
• platinum electrocatalyst