Molten-Salt Electrochemical Biorefinery for Carbon-Neutral Utilization of Biomass

Solar-driven photosynthesis to produce biomass and photocatalysis to reduce carbon dioxide are both carbon sinks. Efficient harvesting of high-performance photocatalysts from photosynthesis-derived biomass is hence promising to relieve carbon footprints. Herein, a molten-salt electrochemical biorefinery of rice husks and silver chloride to silicon-carbide nanowires embedded in carbon matrix with surface-loaded silver nanoparticles (SiC/C/Ag) is reported as a showcase of carbon-neutral utilization of biomass. The molten-salt electrochemical biorefinery features with reduced CO2 emissions, low energy consumption, and compositional/structural refining of cathodic SiC/C/Ag. The resulting SiC/C/Ag shows noticeably enhanced overall CO2 photoreduction. Life cycle assessment (LCA) shows that the CO2 equivalent emission from the production of SiC/C/Ag is compensated by photocatalytic reduction of gaseous CO2 for only 24.77 hours over the SiC/C/Ag.