In this work, we developed a membraneless flow-through trickle-bed electrolyzer (TBE) and evaluated its performance with reversible hydrogen chemistry as well as CO2-to-CO conversion. Preliminary results show that our TBE can achieve industrially relevant current density (> 200 mA cm-2 at 0.5 V cell voltage) using the reversible hydrogen chemistry. Parametric studies indicate that lower liquid flow rates (< 5 mL min-1 cm-2), higher gas flow rates (> 35 mL min-1cm-2), and moderate Pt loadings (> 0.15 mg cm-2) are needed to achieve these current densities. A 1-D model has been developed to correlate with the experimental results while pointing out optimization pathways for improving performance. We also demonstrated the feasibility of syngas production from CO2 in the TBE as well as the scalability of the design, paving the way for low-cost, stable, and scalable CO2 electrolyzer design.
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