Alcohol oxidation over non-noble metal based electrocatalysts

Abstract

The world is shifting towards renewable sources of energy at a very rapid pace to mitigate climate change and meet the increasing energy demands. Renewable sources of energy such as solar energy are very intermittent in nature, and therefore we need to store this energy to stabilize the grid. Electrochemical water splitting is one of the most effective ways to produce hydrogen. At the cathodic end, hydrogen is produced, whereas oxygen is generated at the anodic end of the electrolyzer. However, the energy efficiency of conventional water electrolysis technologies is severely hampered by the kinetic limitations of the anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER). We can overcome this problem by replacing the anodic half-cell of the reaction with glycerol oxidation, which requires lower theoretical oxidation potential and generates various value-added products, making hydrogen production very efficient. In this project, copper cobalt dihydroxy carbonates-based electrocatalysts were used to study the glycerol oxidation reaction (GOR). The CV experiments indicated that the activity of the series is composition dependent. We did this study for ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR) and ethylene glycol oxidation reaction (EGOR) as well. The composition with Cu:Co 80:20 was found to be the most active among all alcohols. This series was found to be particularly active for vicinal alcohols. Different electrochemical setups were used, such as the RDE and the Flow cell, to determine the activity and stability of the catalysts. Product selectivity of the catalysts was determined via HPLC. Different products such as formate, glycerate, and glycolate were observed with strikingly high selectivity for formate production.