Fig. 4. The exploration of the CO₂RR performance and energy intensity of SC-BPMEA with restricted reactant availability.

All the measurements were conducted at 35 °C and 200 mA cm⁻², and the data were collected after 2 h of continuous operation. a–c The FE distributions and the CO₂ requirements (total CO₂ converted to products) of the SC-BPMEAs with different catholyte thickness and input CO₂ flow rates (sccm normalized by electrode area). C₁ refers to CO, formate, and methane. C₂₊ refers to ethylene, ethanol, acetate, and n-propanol. d The total CO₂ single-pass utilization (the CO₂-to-ethylene single-pass conversion see Supplementary Fig. 13a) for the SC-BPMEAs with different catholyte thickness and input CO₂ flow rates. e Carbon balance in SC-BPMEA with 65 μm 0.5 M K₂SO₄ at different input CO₂ flow rates. See Supplementary Fig. 13b for plots on a logarithmic scale. f The comparison of the energy cost distributions among state-of-art CO₂-to-ethylene electrolyzers. The SC-BPMEA case refers to the input CO₂ flow rate of 1.17 sccm cm⁻². The error bars represent the standard deviation of three measurements.