Modeling of mass and charge transfer in an inverted rotating disk electrode (IRDE) reactor

Toward CO2 Electroreduction under Controlled Mass Flow Conditions: A Combined Inverted RDE and Gas Chromatography Approach

The use of rotating disk electrodes (RDEs) is probably the most convenient way of studying simple electrode reactions under well-defined transport conditions. Standard RDEs become, however, less expedient when the studied electrode process is a complex one, leading to the formation of various reaction products. In these cases, the accurate detection and quantification of the formed products are desirable. If the formed products are gaseous, then the usual way of quantifying them is the use of online gas chromatography (GC), a method that is not compatible with open RDE cells. In order to overcome these difficulties, we present here a sophisticated inverted RDE (iRDE) cell design. The design combines various advantages: it is amenable to the same mathematical treatment as standard (downward-facing) RDEs; it can be operated airtight and coupled to online GC; and due to its upward-facing design, the electrode surface is less prone to blockage by any formed gas bubbles. The iRDE&GC design is tested using simple model reactions and is demonstratively used for studying the electrochemical reduction of CO₂, accompanied by parasitic hydrogen evolution, on a silver electrode.

The combination of rotating disk photocatalytic reactor and TiO2 nanotube arrays for environmental pollutants removal

A combined photocatalytic system on one single TiO(2)-nanotube (TNT)/Ti photocatalyst, which was indeed the functional combination of photon-efficient thin-film and conventional bulk-phase photocatalysis processes, was effectively developed in rotating disk photocatalytic reactor for environmental purification applications. The TNT/Ti rotating disk, of uniform size and well-aligned, was successfully prepared by direct anodic oxidation on a dominantly large surface area of 38 cm(2), compared to the typical 1 cm(2) in available literature. To estimate the potentials of combined photocatalytic system for environmental applications, the degradation of rhodamine B was carried out under the optimized conditions, a substrate removal efficiency of nearly 90% and a mineralization efficiency of 56% were observed for initial 20 mg/L solution after 3 h treatment. Compared with the combined photocatalytic system on TiO(2) nanoparticle disk, a significant improvement in substrate removal efficiency of about 25-40% was observed on TNT/Ti disk. It was confirmed that the main degradation of rhodamine B occurred on the upper half of TNT/Ti disk above the heavily colorized sample solution, which was attributed to the superior UV utilization efficiency and the resultant high interfacial photoactivity.