[sgeos]

Outside of Earth, carbon monoxide is the second-most common molecule in the interstellar medium, after molecular hydrogen.

Assuming we happen upon frozen carbon monoxide and manage to refine it, do you suppose liquid carbon monoxide electrolysis could be used to separate the carbon from the oxygen?  As far as my understanding of electrolysis goes, you attach electrodes to a material in the liquid phase and run electricity through the electrolyte.  Carbon monoxide has a low melting point, so this would have to be a low temperature reaction, to the extent electrowinning carbon is even possible.

Relevant triple points:

• Carbon monoxide @ 68.10 K, 15.37 kPa. (liquid)
• Oxygen @ 54.36 K, 0.152 kPa. (liquid or gas)
• Carbon @ 4600 K, 10800 kPa. (definitely solid)

Evidently carbon plating has been achieved using a molten salt as the electrolytic bath.  Also, my textbook has the following passage.

With a sufficient amount of electrical energy, virtually any reaction can be forced to occur.

This leads me to believe that there ought to be a solution to this problem.  Are there suitable cryogenic electrolytes?  What might they be?

Assuming the electrolytic reduction of carbon monoxide is not going to happen, I have two more questions.  Is there another way to extract elemental carbon and oxygen from CO?  Is carbon monoxide itself useful enough to be collected and used as is?

[Hunter2]

I think CO is  not polar enough and the molecule  will not conduct electrical current, its like fuel or oil.

But you can burn it to CO₂ to get some energy.

Seperation of C and O for what reason?

[sgeos]

I think CO is not polar enough

This is probably a problem.

and the molecule will not conduct electrical current, its like fuel or oil.

Evidently a water soluble electrolyte needs to be used when performing electrolysis on water.  CO has a really low melting point though... so polarity aside, an analogue electrolyte for CO may not exist.

Evidently liquid hydrogen chloride was used as an electrolyte for electrodepositing selenium.  Although hydrogen halides have low melting points, their melting points are relatively hot compared things like CO and O₂.

Seperation of C and O for what reason?

Obtaining oxygen is the primary goal, but the carbon could also be useful.  O₂ is half of so called "rocket fuel", and C ought to be useful for something.  Think of the exercise as something like pulling all the Lego bricks in your Lego set apart.  I was also hoping it would wind up leading to an interesting electrochemistry problem not found in any textbook, but that seems doubtful at this point.

But you can burn it to CO₂ to get some energy.

Maybe that makes more sense.  Burn CO to get CO₂ and then let plants or some other process process it to get O₂.  Maybe CO would be more useful as is?