In an article published on October 21 in the journal Advanced Materials, Collège de France Professor Marc Fontecave, Sarah Lamaison, David Wakerley and several other contributors describe the remarkable performance of an electrolysis system for converting carbon dioxide (CO2) into carbon monoxide (CO), a precursor of chemicals and fuels of interest. The coupling of this system with a downstream biological process is also presented, demonstrating the possibility of recovering the CO obtained to produce ethanol, illustrating the potential of this technology. This work, carried out in collaboration with Stanford University, Caltech and Lawrence Livermore National Lab, is a continuation of the work initiated at Collège de France by Sarah Lamaison, during her thesis, and David Wakerley, during his postdoctoral internship, which led to the filing of several patents.
These proprietary technologies are now being developed within the Dioxycle start-up, led by S. Lamaison and D.Wakerley, which aims to bring theseCO2 electroconversion solutions to industrial scale, to decarbonize industry in an economically viable way. Dioxycle, whose project grew out of the work of these two researchers at the Collège de France, is the winner of several national and international innovation awards, including the i-Lab 2020 prize from the Banque publique d'investissement, and, very recently, the only start-up in Europe in the Breakthrough Energy Fellows program sponsored by Bill Gates.
