There is an increasing need to recover resources from waste streams including wastewater. Accordingly, coupling energy recovery with wastewater treatment elegantly addresses challenges at the water-energy nexus. Here, we aim to optimize nanostructured iron oxides as photoelectrocatalysts for use in hydrogen generation during treatment of organic waste streams. Tunable synthesis of nanostructured iron oxides has been demonstrated, and we specifically explore the reactivity of hematite thin films modified with metal dopants to improve process efficiency. To date, nickel-doped hematite demonstrates improved photocurrent generation in solutions of model, low molecular weight organics (e.g., formate and acetate), with nickel also serving as an efficient organics reforming co-catalyst. Ongoing work will extend these results to other model organics, and more complicated organic waste streams associated with domestic wastewater treatment and biofuel processing.

Nanostructured iron oxides as photoelectrocatalysts for waste-to-energy conversion

248th National Meeting (2014)

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