Pulsed Nitrate-to-Ammonia Electroreduction Facilitated by Tandem Catalysis of Nitrite Intermediates

• DOI: 10.1021/jacs.3c00334
• Publication Date: 2023-03-10T16:56:04Z
• Authors: Panpan Li; Ran Li; Yuanting Liu; Minghao Xie; Zhaoyu Jin; Guihua Yu
• Keywords: Ammonia production; Electrolysis of water; Reaction intermediate

Electroreduction of nitrate to ammonia offers a promising pathway for nutrient recycling and recovery from wastewater with energy environmental sustainability. There have been considerable efforts on the regulation reaction pathways facilitate nitrate-to-ammonia conversion over competing hydrogen evolution but only limited success. Here, we report Cu single-atom gel (Cu SAG) electrocatalyst that produces NH3 both nitrite under neutral conditions. Given unique mechanism NO2- activation SAGs spatial confinement strengthened kinetics, pulse electrolysis strategy is presented cascade accumulation intermediates during NO3- reduction prohibited competition reaction, thus substantially enhancing Faradaic efficiency yield rate production compared constant potential electrolysis. This work underlines cooperative approach three-dimensional (3D) framework structures highly efficient enabled by tandem catalysis unfavorable intermediates.