Carbonates and Low Temperature Alkaline Electrochemical Systems

Over the past several years, a significant effort has been put forth by several groups to develop high conductivity, high stability anion exchange membranes (AEMs).  The advantage of AEMs in electrochemical applications is their tolerance to the presence of CO₂and/or production of carbonates in the system, which are poisons to traditional alkaline cells.  What this means is that, for the first time, carbonate anions can be purposefully leveraged in electrochemical systems.  In some cases, the presence of carbonate can be advantageous; carbonate can even facilitate new catalytic pathways.  This talk will focus on recent research at UConn and elsewhere investigating the positive and negative impacts of carbonate anions in low temperature polymer electrolyte electrochemical systems.  Three specific applications that will be highlighted are AEM fuel cells, CO₂ pumping, and the electrochemical partial oxidation of methane to oxygenates (i.e methanol and formaldehyde) at room temperature.