Meeting the Paris Agreement1 will require a wide range of mitigation and removal strategies, among which carbon capture and utilization (CCU) is particularly appealing as it can curb emissions while creating economic value. Notably, according to estimates, the large-scale deployment of CCU could help to decarbonize industrial activities by saving up to 3.5 GtCO2eqy-1 in 2030, that is, an 83% reduction compared with conventional fossil-based technologies.2 Ethylene, a major platform chemical with a worldwide production of 185 Mt in 2018, increased to 217 Mt in 2021,3 is produced via steam cracking of naphtha, currently the predominant production route followed by the thermal cracking of ethane,4 emits 1.51 kgCO2eqkg-1 of ethylene (cradle-to-gate),5 resulting in 0.26 GtCO2eq (in order to satisfy the 2021 production volume) and accounting for 30% of the total energy needs of the chemical industry.6

At present, research efforts focus on a wide range of direct electrocatalytic CCU routes to produce a myriad of valuable chemicals (e. g., methanol, acetic acid, ethylene, propanol, among others), which will allow the chemical industry to shift away from the conventional petroleum-based production. Direct electrochemical reduction of CO2 to C2+ molecules pose some drawbacks, including bicarbonate formation that resulted low CO2 utilisation and low C2+ product selectivity. To overcome these limitations, the development of nanostructured bi-metallic electrocatalysts and the use of tandem electrolyser for CO2 reduction can be a possible solution. Since the electroreduction of CO2 to CO and/or H2 has been extensively studied, we here demonstrate the electroreduction of synthesis gas (syngas – a mixture of CO and H2), which are the products from CO2-to-CO. Electrosynthesis of ethylene and glycols is performed on state-of-the-art continuous flow three-compartment cell to ethylene and sodium acetate, simultaneously. Core-shell nanostructured Cu-based particles, which were synthesized using the facile sol-gel method, were deposited onto the gas diffusion electrodes using air sprayer. The synthesized materials are characterized using XRD, SEM, EDX-HRTEM, and XPS. The performance of the electrosynthesis from syngas, which are analysed using GC and NMR, is discussed. In addition, design of experiments and multiphysics modelling are employed to optimize the process efficacy in the continuous flow three-compartment cell, providing the scientific insight for cell stacking.