Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels using a tin plated cathode

Abstract

The study focused on the reduction of CO2 and the formation of hydrocarbon fuels. Nowadays, the world is facing the global warming which majorly contributed by the emission of large amount of CO2. There are lots of methods to reduce and recycle the content of CO2. One of the methods that used in this study is electrochemical reduction of CO2. Pure tin is one the reducing agent for the CO2. Therefore, the tin deposition must be performed prior to the reduction process. Tin (II) chloride was used in the deposition to get the pure tin. The tin (II) is reduced to tin metal at the potential range of -0.5 V to -0.8 V. the limiting current density was increasing when the rotation rate increased. Rotation speed of 100 rpm, 400 rpm, 900 rpm and 1600 rpm were used to determine the limiting current density that is 0.000018 A/cm2, 0.000028 A/cm2, 0.000036 A/cm2 and 0.000051 A/cm2 respectively. Three different conditions of water were used to test the efficiency of reduction of CO2. The conditions were separately tested at pH5, 7 and 9. The optimum condition of water was then compared with that of in methanol. The best condition for reduction of CO2 was at pH 9. To get the range of reduction efficiency, the efficiency of reduction of CO2 was compared to that of the reduction of nitrogen, N2. The formation of hydrocarbon fuels was investigated by the integration of the area under the graph reduction of CO2.