Utilizing renewable electricity to drive the electrochemical CO2 reduction (ECO2R) reaction to value-added chemicals has been of great interest to mitigate CO2 emissions and climate change. However, some of the remaining challenges of the ECO2R include the requirement of pure CO2 gas feedstocks and the undesirable precipitation of bicarbonate at the cathode due to localized high pH. In this work, we explore reactive capture, which serves as a technology that electrochemically captures and converts CO2 in a single reactor, as a possible solution to these challenges. By utilizing bipolar membranes to shift the pH of dilute bicarbonate electrolyte solutions to generate CO2 gas, we investigate the feasibility of utilizing sea water as a direct carbon source for ECO2R. Additionally, we study different ways of engineering ECO2R catalysts to minimize bicarbonate precipitation and maximize the selectivity towards CO2R products in a reactive capture configuration.
