The nitrogen reduction to produce ammonia (NH3) is one of the important chemical transformation processes. Electrocatalytic NRR offers a promising route alternative to the conventional Haber-Bosch (HB) process, because it can produce NH3 using water as proton sources at ambient temperature and pressure. However, the electrochemical NRR has faced severe limitations of a low N2 solubility in water and a high dissociation energy (945 kJ/mol) of inert nitrogen triple bond. Meanwhile, large amounts of NO3- ions, causing serious environmental issues like eutrophication, are contained in wastewater from agriculture and industry. If NH3 were efficiently produced from NO3- ions in an electrochemical system, it would offer dual routes of water purification as well as reuse of the waste nitrate for useful chemical production. Furthermore, in the photoelectrocatalytic system, the overpotentials required for NO3- ions reduction can be effectively reduced by harvesting solar energy from photoelectrocatalysts. In this study, we will introduce multiple effective strategies that can be used to design and modify photoelectrocatalysts to increase NO3- reduction performance in terms of faradaic efficiency, selectivity, and conversion rate. We will discuss in detail how each of the catalysts modification strategies we perform alters the physicochemical characteristics of the catalyst and affects the photoelectrocatalytic NO3- reduction. The experimental results and discussion contained in this study can lead to a new strategy for designing efficient photoelectrocatalysts for NO3- reduction.

Rational design of photoelectrocatalysts to convert nitrate ions in wastewater to ammonia

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ACS Fall 2022

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