High-Performance Electrochemical Nitrate Reduction to Ammonia under Ambient Conditions Using a FeOOH Nanorod Catalyst.
ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES 2022;
14:17312-17318. [PMID:
35394760 DOI:
10.1021/acsami.2c00436]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
Electrocatalytic nitrate reduction is promising as an environmentally friendly process to produce high value-added ammonia with simultaneous removal of nitrate, a widespread nitrogen pollutant, for water treatment; however, efficient electrocatalysts with high selectivity are required for ammonia formation. In this work, FeOOH nanorod with intrinsic oxygen vacancy supported on carbon paper (FeOOH/CP) is proposed as a high-performance electrocatalyst for converting nitrate to ammonia at room temperature. When operated in a 0.1 M phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) solution with 0.1 M NaNO3, FeOOH/CP is able to obtain a large NH3 yield of 2419 μg h-1 cm-2 and a surprisingly high Faradic efficiency of 92% with excellent stability. Density functional theory calculation demonstrates that the potential-determining step for nitrate reduction over FeOOH (200) is *NO2H + H+ + e- → *NO + H2O.
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