molecules Review Benchmarking Catalysts for Formic Acid/Formate Electrooxidation Scott J. Folkman 1,* , Jesús González-Cobos 2,*, Stefano Giancola 1,†, Irene Sánchez-Molina 1 and José Ramón Galán-Mascarós 1,3 1 Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), Av. Paisos Catalans, 16, 43007 Tarragona, Spain;
[email protected] (S.G.);
[email protected] (I.S.-M.);
[email protected] (J.R.G.-M.) 2 Institut de Recherches sur la Catalyse et l’Environnement de Lyon, UMR 5256, CNRS, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, 2 Avenue A. Einstein, 69626 Villeurbanne, France 3 ICREA, Pg. Llu’ıs Companys 23, 08010 Barcelona, Spain * Correspondence:
[email protected] (S.J.F.);
[email protected] (J.G.-C.) † Current address: Orchestra Scientific S.L. Av. Paisos Catalans, 16, 43007 Tarragona, Spain. Abstract: Energy production and consumption without the use of fossil fuels are amongst the biggest challenges currently facing humankind and the scientific community. Huge efforts have been invested in creating technologies that enable closed carbon or carbon neutral fuel cycles, limiting CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Formic acid/formate (FA) has attracted intense interest as a liquid fuel over the last half century, giving rise to a plethora of studies on catalysts for its efficient electrocatalytic oxidation for usage in fuel cells. However, new catalysts and catalytic systems are often difficult to compare because of the variability in conditions and catalyst parameters examined. In this review, we Citation: Folkman, S.J.; discuss the extensive literature on FA electrooxidation using platinum, palladium and non-platinum González-Cobos, J.; Giancola, S.; group metal-based catalysts, the conditions typically employed in formate electrooxidation and the Sánchez-Molina, I.; Galán-Mascarós, main electrochemical parameters for the comparison of anodic electrocatalysts to be applied in a FA J.R.