Review on electrochemical carbon dioxide capture and transformation with bipolar membranes

Anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from the combustion of fossil fuels aggravates the global greenhouse effect. The implementation of CO2 capture and transformation technologies have recently received great attention for providing a pathway in dealing with global climate change. Among these technologies, electrochemical CO2 capture technology has attracted wide attention because of its environmental friendliness and flexible operating processes. Bipolar membranes (BPMs) are considered as one of the key components in electrochemical devices, especially for electrochemical CO2 reduction and electrodialysis devices. BPMs create an alkaline environment for CO2 capture and a stable pH environment for electrocatalysis on a single electrode. The key to CO2 capture in these devices is to understand the water dissociation mechanism occurring in BPMs, which could be used for optimizing the operating conditions for CO2 capture and transformation. In this paper, the references and technologies of electrochemical CO2 capture based on BPMs are reviewed in detail, thus the challenges and opportunities are also discussed for the development of more efficient, sustainable and practical CO2 capture and transformation based on BPMs.