Kamyar Parsi

Alumni

The urge of tackling the issues of the exceeding energy demand, and the consistent CO₂ emissions as a simultaneous phenomenon, puts the concept of utilizing the fuel cells in a spotlight. The scarcity and the cost of the noble metals such as Platinum (Pt) or Palladium (Pd) is a significant limiting parameter in implementing them in large scale industrial applications. On the other hand, the carbon dioxide reduction using the aqueous-fed systems constrains the conversion to low current densities due to the inadequate mass-transport diffusion pathway, keeping in mind that for commercial scale utilization, reaching high current densities (~200 mA/cm^2) is essential. As a result, Half-cell gas diffusion electrode (GDE) setups are considered to be highly promising for carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CO₂RR). Further concerns exist to be tackled as well, such as flooding, resulting in a switch in selectivity towards hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), taking place during the reduction process.

The focus of my thesis will be to implement a GDE setup in order to investigate the Silver (Ag) catalyst towards the electrochemical CO₂ reduction; in addition of combining the scanning flow cell (SFC) with on-line inductive coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) to the system to check for the silver dissolution during the process.