Level: Beginner
Matthew Philips, Senior Process Engineer, Avantium
The electrochemical conversion of CO2 to formate can be accomplished using various types of electrodes (2D, 3D, gas diffusion, and trickle). Data from over 90 papers and patents on this reaction was collected and consolidated, resulting in a table of over 600 rows and 25 columns. Initial data exploration showed that gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs) are the most efficient in converting CO2 to formate, and this conclusion is clearly shown using JMP’s Graph Builder. However, we also found that the studies using GDEs are limited since they all took a one factor at a time approach to optimization. This may have resulted in a failure to identify global maximuma and interactions between key characteristics of the GDE, indicating the potential to further increase the current efficiency of the reaction. To investigate this possibility, JMP’s Decision Tree was used on the consolidated data, explaining 81% of the variation in efficiency through just six influential factors. These factors could be manipulated in a future experiment that is likely to further optimize the reaction using this technology.
