Progress of CO2 Electroreduction to Oxalic Acid

In recent years, climate issues such as global warming caused by excessive carbon dioxide emissions have attracted wide attention around the world. And carbon emission reduction has become a common challenge to the sustainable development of human society. The conversion of carbon dioxide into high value-added chemicals by electrochemical methods is one of the ideal ways to achieve emission reduction and high value-added utilization of carbon dioxide. However, there are still many problems such as high energy consumption, low carbon dioxide conversion, poor product selectivity and difficult separation. In this paper, we take the electroreduction of carbon dioxide to oxalic acid as an example, comprehensively introduce the research progress from the aspects of reaction mechanism, catalysts, electrolyte, electrode and reactor. The key problems in the production of oxalic acid by carbon dioxide electroreduction are discussed and some valuable suggestions are put forward for the future research of carbon dioxide electroreduction to oxalic acid.