Sustainable Conversion of Harmful Algae Biomass into a CO2 Reduction Electrocatalyst for Two-Fold Carbon Utilization

Harmful algae blooms (HABs) frequently occur all over the world and cause great harm to the environment, human health, and aquatic ecosystems. However, owing to their great growth rate and large nutrient intake capacity, algae can enrich a large amount of carbon (CO₂) and nutritional elements (N and P) in their biomass. Thus, this could be applied as a robust approach to battle global warming and water eutrophication if the harmful algae biomass was effectively harvested and utilized. Herein, we propose a thermochemical approach to convert algae biomass into a nitrogen-doped electrocatalyst for CO₂ reduction. The as-synthesized carbon catalyst exhibits a favorable electrochemical CO₂ reduction activity. The key drivers of the environmental impacts in the thermochemical conversion approach with a comparison with the commonly used landfilling approach are identified with life cycle assessment. The former presents much lower environmental burdens in terms of impacts such as freshwater/terrestrial ecotoxicity and human toxicity than the latter. Moreover, if the thermochemical conversion process was successfully applied for biomass conversion worldwide, 2.17 × 10⁸ tons of CO₂-eq, 8.42 × 10⁶ tons of N, and 1.21 × 10⁶ tons of P could be removed from the global carbon and other element cycles. Meanwhile, the thermochemical approach is also similar to landfilling in terms of costs. The results from this work provide a brand-new perspective for achieving twofold CO₂ utilization and efficiently battling harmful algae blooms.