Energy-saving and product-oriented hydrogen peroxide electrosynthesis enabled by electrochemistry pairing and product engineering.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37805528.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-41997-x and PMC identifier 10560254.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Hydrogen peroxide (H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub>) electrosynthesis through oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is drawing worldwide attention, whereas suffering seriously from the sluggish oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and the difficult extraction of thermodynamically unstable H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub>. Herein, we present an electrosynthesis protocol involving coupling ORR-to-H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> with waste polyethylene terephthalate (PET) upcycling and the first H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> conversion strategy. Ni-Mn bimetal- and onion carbon-based catalysts are designed to catalyze ORR-to-H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> and ethylene glycol electrooxidation with the Faradaic efficiency of 97.5% (H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub>) and 93.0% (formate). This electrolysis system runs successfully at only 0.927 V to achieve an industrial-scale current density of 400 mA cm<sup>-2</sup>, surpassing all reported H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> electrosynthesis systems. H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> product is upgraded through two downstream routes of converting H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> into sodium perborate and dibenzoyl peroxide. Techno-economic evolution highlights the high gross profit of the ORR || PET upcycling protocol over HER || PET upcycling and ORR || OER. This work provides an energy-saving methodology for the electrosynthesis of H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> and other chemicals.