Electrochemical oxygen reduction to hydrogen peroxide at practical rates in strong acidic media.
Xiao ZhangXunhua ZhaoPeng ZhuZachary AdlerZhen-Yu WuYuanyue LiuHaotian WangPublished in: Nature communications (2022)
Electrochemical oxygen reduction to hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) in acidic media, especially in proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrode assembly reactors, suffers from low selectivity and the lack of low-cost catalysts. Here we present a cation-regulated interfacial engineering approach to promote the H 2 O 2 selectivity (over 80%) under industrial-relevant generation rates (over 400 mA cm -2 ) in strong acidic media using just carbon black catalyst and a small number of alkali metal cations, representing a 25-fold improvement compared to that without cation additives. Our density functional theory simulation suggests a "shielding effect" of alkali metal cations which squeeze away the catalyst/electrolyte interfacial protons and thus prevent further reduction of generated H 2 O 2 to water. A double-PEM solid electrolyte reactor was further developed to realize a continuous, selective (∼90%) and stable (over 500 hours) generation of H 2 O 2 via implementing this cation effect for practical applications.
Keyphrases
- ionic liquid
- hydrogen peroxide
- density functional theory
- low cost
- nitric oxide
- room temperature
- wastewater treatment
- molecular dynamics
- anaerobic digestion
- highly efficient
- heavy metals
- quality improvement
- structural basis
- risk assessment
- high resolution
- metal organic framework
- carbon dioxide
- carbon nanotubes
- label free
- liquid chromatography