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 CO₂ under moderate, industrially relevant 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/cm²) while maintaining faradaic efficiency of 95% for formate and electrochemical energy efficiency >20%, and compare our results to the state-of-the-art systems in the literature.