High-Performance Electrochemical Nitrate Reduction to Ammonia under Ambient Conditions Using a FeOOH Nanorod Catalyst.

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.

[1]  Xuping Sun.  Amorphous Boron Carbide on Titanium Dioxide Nanobelt Arrays for High-Efficiency Electrocatalytic NO Reduction to NH3. , 2022, Angewandte Chemie.

[2]  Tingshuai Li,et al.  Ambient Ammonia Synthesis via Electrochemical Reduction of Nitrate Enabled by NiCo2 O4 Nanowire Array. , 2022, Small.

[3]  Yongsong Luo,et al.  High-efficiency ammonia electrosynthesis on self-supported Co2AlO4 nanoarray in neutral media by selective reduction of nitrate , 2022, Chemical Engineering Journal.

[4]  Baozhan Zheng,et al.  Ti2O3 Nanoparticles with Ti3+ Sites toward Efficient NH3 Electrosynthesis under Ambient Conditions. , 2021, ACS applied materials & interfaces.

[5]  Abdullah M. Asiri,et al.  Enhancing electrocatalytic N2-to-NH3 fixation by suppressing hydrogen evolution with alkylthiols modified Fe3P nanoarrays , 2021, Nano Research.

[6]  Haotian Wang,et al.  Electrochemical ammonia synthesis via nitrate reduction on Fe single atom catalyst , 2021, Nature Communications.

[7]  T. Shao,et al.  Efficient Nitrogen Fixation to Ammonia through Integration of Plasma Oxidation with Electrocatalytic Reduction. , 2021, Angewandte Chemie.

[8]  Chaozheng He,et al.  A Theoretical Evaluation of Possible N2 Reduction Mechanism on Mo2B2 , 2021, Advanced Theory and Simulations.

[9]  Jun Lu,et al.  Electrochemical reduction of nitrate to ammonia via direct eight-electron transfer using a copper–molecular solid catalyst , 2020, Nature Energy.

[10]  Cheng Tang,et al.  In Situ Fragmented Bismuth Nanoparticles for Electrocatalytic Nitrogen Reduction , 2020, Advanced Energy Materials.

[11]  Gao‐Ren Li,et al.  Boosting Lattice Oxygen Oxidation of Perovskite to Efficiently Catalyze Oxygen Evolution Reaction by FeOOH Decoration , 2020, Research.

[12]  Qian Sun,et al.  β-FeOOH Interlayer With Abundant Oxygen Vacancy Toward Boosting Catalytic Effect for Lithium Sulfur Batteries , 2020, Frontiers in Chemistry.

[13]  Chenguo Hu,et al.  Low Li ion diffusion barrier on low-crystalline FeOOH nanosheets and high performance of energy storage , 2020, Nano Research.

[14]  P. Leavitt,et al.  Unabated nitrogen pollution favours growth of toxic cyanobacteria over chlorophytes in most hypereutrophic lakes. , 2020, Environmental science & technology.

[15]  G. Huang,et al.  A biophysiological perspective on enhanced nitrate removal from decentralized domestic sewage using gravitational-flow multi-soil-layering systems. , 2020, Chemosphere.

[16]  T. Zhu,et al.  Highly active and durable carbon electrocatalyst for nitrate reduction reaction. , 2019, Water research.

[17]  Cheng Tang,et al.  Electrochemical Nitrogen Reduction: Identification and Elimination of Contamination in Electrolyte , 2019, ACS Energy Letters.

[18]  B. Goldsmith,et al.  Activity and Selectivity Trends in Electrocatalytic Nitrate Reduction on Transition Metals , 2019, ACS Catalysis.

[19]  Douglas R. MacFarlane,et al.  Challenges and prospects in the catalysis of electroreduction of nitrogen to ammonia , 2019, Nature Catalysis.

[20]  Haihui Wang,et al.  Ammonia Synthesis Under Ambient Conditions: Selective Electroreduction of Dinitrogen to Ammonia on Black Phosphorus Nanosheets. , 2019, Angewandte Chemie.

[21]  P. Westerhoff,et al.  Electrocatalytic reduction of nitrate: Fundamentals to full-scale water treatment applications , 2018, Applied Catalysis B: Environmental.

[22]  Qiang Zhang,et al.  A Review of Electrocatalytic Reduction of Dinitrogen to Ammonia under Ambient Conditions , 2018 .

[23]  Yang Li,et al.  Electrochemical removal of nitrate in industrial wastewater , 2018, Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering.

[24]  Bin Wang,et al.  β-FeOOH on carbon nanotubes as a cathode material for Na-ion batteries , 2017 .

[25]  Xiao Shang,et al.  NiSe@NiOOH Core-Shell Hyacinth-like Nanostructures on Nickel Foam Synthesized by in Situ Electrochemical Oxidation as an Efficient Electrocatalyst for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction. , 2016, ACS applied materials & interfaces.

[26]  Robert Schlögl,et al.  The Haber-Bosch process revisited: on the real structure and stability of "ammonia iron" under working conditions. , 2013, Angewandte Chemie.

[27]  F. Dentener,et al.  Ammonia in the environment: from ancient times to the present. , 2008, Environmental pollution.

[28]  Robert Schlögl,et al.  Catalytic synthesis of ammonia-a "never-ending story"? , 2003, Angewandte Chemie.

[29]  J. Struger,et al.  Nitrogen pollution: an assessment of its threat to amphibian survival. , 1999, Environmental health perspectives.

[30]  Yuting Wang,et al.  Recent advances in non-noble metal electrocatalysts for nitrate reduction , 2021 .