Development of Energy Conversion Systems for Carbon Dioxide Utilization

Growing concerns on greenhouse gas emissions due to industrial activity and decrease in conventional energy resources present significant challenges to satisfy the world’s energy demand. Minimizing CO2 emissions by developing efficient methods to capture and store or convert CO2 into useful chemicals is indeed critical for environmental protection. Electrochemical and photochemical reduction of CO2 have been identified as viable technologies to recycle the CO2 to reduced forms and store energy in chemical form. Energy storage in chemical form is highly desirable as it generates carbon neutral fuels for portable applications which could replace those driven by fossil fuels maintaining an environmental stability. Previously, works have shown the discovery of co-catalyst systems with different noble metals such as Ag and ionic liquids such as EMIM-BF4 which have opened up several avenues for electrochemical reduction of CO2. This thesis reports the development and validation of Electrochemical Flow Cell as well as a Photo-Electrochemical (PEC) Cell for electrochemical and photochemical reduction of CO2, respectively. These systems have been designed and fabricated to exhibit the outstanding performance of inexpensive and earth-abundant transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) materials as electrocatalysts along with ionic liquid (EMIM BF4) for conversion of CO2 into energy rich intermediates. The results of these experiments suggest that the co-catalyst system (TMDCs and EMIM-BF4) could convert CO2 in a fast, energy and cost effective way which could open doors for CO2 conversion in ambient conditions.