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Hu Y, Liu J, Lee C, Luo W, Dong J, Liang Z, Chen M, Hu E, Zhang M, Debbie Soo XY, Zhu Q, Li F, Rawat RS, Ng MF, Zhong L, Han B, Geng D, Yan Q. Balanced NO x- and Proton Adsorption for Efficient Electrocatalytic NO x- to NH 3 Conversion. ACS Nano 2023. [PMID: 37979042 DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.3c06798] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/19/2023]
Abstract
Electrocatalytic nitrate (NO3-)/nitrite (NO2-) reduction reaction (eNOx-RR) to ammonia under ambient conditions presents a green and promising alternative to the Haber-Bosch process. Practically available NOx- sources, such as wastewater or plasma-enabled nitrogen oxidation reaction (p-NOR), typically have low NOx- concentrations. Hence, electrocatalyst engineering is important for practical eNOx-RR to obtain both high NH3 Faradaic efficiency (FE) and high yield rate. Herein, we designed balanced NOx- and proton adsorption by properly introducing Cu sites into the Fe/Fe2O3 electrocatalyst. During the eNOx-RR process, the H adsorption is balanced, and the good NOx- affinity is maintained. As a consequence, the designed Cu-Fe/Fe2O3 catalyst exhibits promising performance, with an average NH3 FE of ∼98% and an average NH3 yield rate of 15.66 mg h-1 cm-2 under the low NO3- concentration (32.3 mM) of typical industrial wastewater at an applied potential of -0.6 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE). With low-power direct current p-NOR generated NOx- (23.5 mM) in KOH electrolyte, the Cu-Fe/Fe2O3 catalyst achieves an FE of ∼99% and a yield rate of 15.1 mg h-1 cm-2 for NH3 production at -0.5 V (vs RHE). The performance achieved in this study exceeds industrialization targets for NH3 production by exploiting two available low-concentration NOx- sources.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yue Hu
- School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
- School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore
| | - Jiawei Liu
- Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A*STAR, 138634, Singapore
| | - Carmen Lee
- School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore
| | - Wenyu Luo
- School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore
| | - Jinfeng Dong
- School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore
| | - Zhishan Liang
- School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore
| | - Mengxin Chen
- School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore
| | - Erhai Hu
- School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore
| | - Mingsheng Zhang
- Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A*STAR, 138634, Singapore
| | | | - Qiang Zhu
- Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A*STAR, 138634, Singapore
| | - Fengkun Li
- Natural Science and Science Education, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 637616, Singapore
- College of Materials Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 211106, Jiangsu, China
| | - Rajdeep Singh Rawat
- Natural Science and Science Education, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 637616, Singapore
| | - Man-Fai Ng
- Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), A*STAR, 138632, Singapore
| | - Lixiang Zhong
- School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Bo Han
- SCARCE Laboratory, Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N), Nanyang Technological University, 637459, Singapore
| | - Dongsheng Geng
- School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
- School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
| | - Qingyu Yan
- School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore
- Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A*STAR, 138634, Singapore
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