Membrane-less co-laminar flow reactor for green electrosynthesis - CME Seminar Series Fall 2025

Advancement of sustainable chemical synthetic methods is an essential step toward addressing persistent global challenges such as greenhouse gas emissions, reliance on fossil fuels and hazardous synthetic methods. In this context, electrosynthesis can offer a safe and sustainable pathway by using electrons as clean source of energy, enabling synthetic transformation under mild operating conditions. Despite these advantages, conventional electrochemical batch reactors often employ mixed electrolytes which typically suffer from side reactions and poor selectivity.

Aiming for improving the above-mentioned challenges, this research introduces a novel membrane-less co-laminar flow cell (CLFC) with flow-through porous electrode design in which cathodic and the anodic streams are separated without using a physical membrane. Using this platform, glyoxylic acid is simultaneously generated through the paired reduction of oxalic acid and oxidation of glyoxal. Lead deposited cathodes improve the product selectivity by suppressing hydrogen evolution reaction, and tin oxide coated anodes, suppress parasitic oxygen evolution reaction, ensuring selective anodic oxidation.

Built on the success from the previous reaction system, CLFC concept will be extended towards convergent paired electrosynthesis of cyanoacetic acid, achieved from cathodic reduction of CO2 and anodic oxidation of tetraalkylammonium salts in acetonitrile medium. This reaction system combines CO2 utilization with organic synthesis under mild and continuous-flow conditions, which demonstrates the versatility of CLFC reactors as a promising platform for the synthetic chemistry.