Fe3O4 nanoparticle-decorated 3D pinewood-derived carbon for high-efficiency electrochemical nitrate reduction to ammonia

Ting Xie; Zhengwei Cai; Xuwei Liu; Jun Li; Xiaoya Fan; Xun He; Yonglan Luo; Dongdong Zheng; Shengjun Sun; Sulaiman Alfaifi; Chenggang Xu; Xuping Sun

doi:10.1039/d3cc03989g

Fe₃O₄ nanoparticle-decorated 3D pinewood-derived carbon for high-efficiency electrochemical nitrate reduction to ammonia

Chem Commun (Camb). 2023 Oct 12;59(82):12322-12325. doi: 10.1039/d3cc03989g.

Authors

Ting Xie^{1

2}, Zhengwei Cai³, Xuwei Liu², Jun Li², Xiaoya Fan², Xun He³, Yonglan Luo², Dongdong Zheng³, Shengjun Sun³, Sulaiman Alfaifi⁴, Chenggang Xu¹, Xuping Sun^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu 610068, Sichuan, China. xucgg@163.com.
² Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, Sichuan, China. xpsun@uestc.edu.cn.
³ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, Shandong, China.
⁴ Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia.

PMID: 37753615
DOI: 10.1039/d3cc03989g

Abstract

Electrochemical nitrate (NO₃^-) reduction is a sustainable pathway for ambient ammonia (NH₃) synthesis while eliminating NO₃^- pollutants in water. However, the NO₃^- reduction reaction (NO₃^-RR) involves a complicated eight-electron transfer process, which needs highly selective and efficient electrocatalysts. This work describes the synthesis of Fe₃O₄ nanoparticle-decorated 3D pinewood-derived carbon (Fe₃O₄/PC) as a high-efficiency catalyst for the electroreduction of NO₃^- to NH₃ at ambient reaction conditions. When tested in 0.1 M NaOH containing 0.1 M NO₃^-, the Fe₃O₄/PC obtains a large NH₃ yield of 394.8 μmol h^-1 cm^-2 and high faradaic efficiency (FE) of 91.6% at -0.4 V. Significantly, Fe₃O₄/PC also delivers high stability.