Integrated Electrocatalyst Platform for Electroreduction of Oxyanions in Water

Abstract

Electrocatalysis offers a promising solution to remove harmful oxyanions from wastewater. However, the development of high-performance electrocatalysts is typically achieved using a trial-and-error method, and myriad materials need to be tested. Herein, we develop a systematic platform to develop electrocatalysts toward the electrochemical reduction of oxyanions in aqueous solution. This framework includes the liquid robot synthesis of electrocatalysts and electrochemical screening of the as-produced materials via cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry technique on those showing promising cyclic voltammetry results. For a case study, the synthesis and electrocatalytic performance toward the electroreduction of nitrate have been successfully validated on metal nanoparticles, of which the superior performance of copper has been identified. This result is in good agreement with the theoretical calculations, suggesting the effectiveness of the platform for the development of electrocatalysts for oxyanion reduction.

Computational Catalysis and Machine Learning Applications to Water Treatment Technologies

“…In particular, we focus on nitrate pollution; resulting from agricultural and industrial sources, nitrate can cause serious environmental and health problems such as eutrophication and methemoglobinemia [30]. To rapidly validate the theoretical and ML calculations, we have developed an integrated platform [33] for the synthesis and characterization of electrocatalysts toward electro-reduction of oxyanions (Figure 4). For the synthesis of metal nanoparticles (NPs), a chemical reduction reaction was adopted on a versatile liquid handling robot.…”