Technoeconomic and mechanistic insights into the electroreduction of carbon dioxide to value added chemicals
type: CreativeWork
description: Addressing societal needs of improving the standard of living for the rising human population has placed a tremendous stress on the energy supply driving global economic growth. Historically, such increased energy demands have been satisfied by the combustion (burning) of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. However, the increased utilization of fossil fuels has come with a penalty: a rapid rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, especially in the past few decades, with the daily average value crossing and staying above the 400 ppm mark in 2016 for the first time in recorded human history. These increased CO2 levels (along with other greenhouse gases) have been shown to negatively affect the earth’s surface energy balance, leading to an increase in the global mean temperature anomaly (commonly known as global warming) and deleterious climate change effects. Owing to the large scale and growing nature of excess CO2 emissions (currently 4GtC yr–1), a variety of mitigation, adaptation, and utilization approaches need to be implemented together (the stabilization wedges approach), to enable the transition of modern society towards a carbon neutral future. This dissertation focuses on one such CO2 utilization approach i.e., the renewable electricity driven electroreduction of CO2 to value-added carbon chemicals such as carbon monoxide (CO), formic acid (HCOOH), methane (CH4), methanol (CH3OH), ethylene (C2H4), and ethanol (C2H5OH). These chemicals are currently manufactured on the industrial scale using fossil fuel based methods. The renewable electricity driven electroreduction of CO2 could be a sustainable alternative to such methods. This dissertation employs a multiscale approach to investigate both the system level technoeconomic and molecular level mechanistic aspects of CO2 electroreduction. Chapter 2 of this dissertation introduces a comprehensive, yet easy to use, gross-margin model to evaluate the technoeconomic prospects of CO2 electro…
abstract: Addressing societal needs of improving the standard of living for the rising human population has placed a tremendous stress on the energy supply driving global economic growth. Historically, such increased energy demands have been satisfied by the combustion (burning) of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. However, the increased utilization of fossil fuels has come with a penalty: a rapid rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, especially in the past few decades, with the daily average value crossing and staying above the 400 ppm mark in 2016 for the first time in recorded human history. These increased CO2 levels (along with other greenhouse gases) have been shown to negatively affect the earth’s surface energy balance, leading to an increase in the global mean temperature anomaly (commonly known as global warming) and deleterious climate change effects. Owing to the large scale and growing nature of excess CO2 emissions (currently 4GtC yr–1), a variety of mitigation, adaptation, and utilization approaches need to be implemented together (the stabilization wedges approach), to enable the transition of modern society towards a carbon neutral future. This dissertation focuses on one such CO2 utilization approach i.e., the renewable electricity driven electroreduction of CO2 to value-added carbon chemicals such as carbon monoxide (CO), formic acid (HCOOH), methane (CH4), methanol (CH3OH), ethylene (C2H4), and ethanol (C2H5OH). These chemicals are currently manufactured on the industrial scale using fossil fuel based methods. The renewable electricity driven electroreduction of CO2 could be a sustainable alternative to such methods. This dissertation employs a multiscale approach to investigate both the system level technoeconomic and molecular level mechanistic aspects of CO2 electroreduction. Chapter 2 of this dissertation introduces a comprehensive, yet easy to use, gross-margin model to evaluate the technoeconomic prospects of CO2 electro…
author: Verma, Sumit
language: en
keywords: CO2 Electroreduction, CO2 Utilization, Electrocatalysis, Technoeconomic analysis
date published: 2018-09-04T20:33:51Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:38Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101121