Key Laboratory of Pollution Process and Environmental Criteria, Ministry of Education, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University, 300350, Tianjin, China.
Tianjin Key Laboratory of Environmental Technology for Complex Trans-Media Pollution, Nankai University, 300350, Tianjin, China.
Nat Commun. 2020 Apr 7;11(1):1731. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-15597-y.
Hydrogen peroxide (HO) synthesis by electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction has attracted great attention as a green substitute for anthraquinone process. However, low oxygen utilization efficiency (<1%) and high energy consumption remain obstacles. Herein we propose a superhydrophobic natural air diffusion electrode (NADE) to greatly improve the oxygen diffusion coefficient at the cathode about 5.7 times as compared to the normal gas diffusion electrode (GDE) system. NADE allows the oxygen to be naturally diffused to the reaction interface, eliminating the need to pump oxygen/air to overcome the resistance of the gas diffusion layer, resulting in fast HO production (101.67 mg h cm) with a high oxygen utilization efficiency (44.5%-64.9%). Long-term operation stability of NADE and its high current efficiency under high current density indicate great potential to replace normal GDE for HO electrosynthesis and environmental remediation on an industrial scale.
电化学氧气还原反应合成过氧化氢（HO）作为蒽醌法的绿色替代品引起了极大关注。然而，氧气利用率低（<1%）和能耗高仍然是障碍。在此，我们提出了一种超疏水天然空气扩散电极（NADE），与普通气体扩散电极（GDE）系统相比，可将阴极的氧气扩散系数大大提高约 5.7 倍。NADE 允许氧气自然扩散到反应界面，无需泵送氧气/空气来克服气体扩散层的阻力，从而快速产生 HO（101.67mg h cm），氧气利用率高（44.5%-64.9%）。NADE 的长期运行稳定性和在高电流密度下的高电流效率表明，它有很大的潜力替代普通 GDE 用于 HO 电合成和工业规模的环境修复。
