Waste wine mash-derived doped carbon materials as an efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.10.100Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A N- and Fe-co-doped carbon material is prepared by waste wine mash.

  • ORR half wave potential of WA-Fe-N is 15 mV higher than that of the commercial 40% Pt/C.

  • N- and Fe-co-doped and activation treatments improve the electrocatalyst properties.

  • WA-Fe-N is a new type of low cost ORR catalyst for fuel cell and metal-air cell.

Abstract

Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is a core reaction of fuel cell and metal-air cell. In recent years, it has been a hot topic to study non-precious metal catalysts for ORR. Herein, we have used waste wine mash-derived carbon, melamine and ferric chloride to prepare a Fe- and N- co-doped carbon catalyst. The specific surface area of the catalyst is up to 1066.6 m2 g−1. And its wave potential is 15 mV higher than that of commercial Pt/C catalyst. The ORR on our catalyst followed a four-electron pathway; and it has high stability and high impressive immunity to methanol. After continuous oxygen reduction of 30,000s, the retention rate is 90%.

Introduction

The rapid development of human society brings a great deal of consumption of traditional energy. In order to solve this problem, the development of efficient and renewable energy technologies has become a hot issue [[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]]. Among these new energy technologies, fuel cells are efficient and emission-free, which meets the requirements of the development of the time [[11], [12], [13], [14], [15]]. The reduction of the cathode oxidant is a critical process [16,17], which determines the performance of the fuel cell. The most commonly used oxygen reduction catalysts are platinum-based catalysts. However, the reserves of platinum in the world are very small, which leads to its high production cost and cannot be used in a large area [18,19]. In order to find a substitute for platinum, non-precious metal catalysts emerge as the times require [[20], [21], [22]]. It is found that the metal and heteroatom co-doped carbon-based materials have excellent oxygen reduction activity [[23], [24], [25], [26]]. Especially the biomass derived carbon, which is widely sourced and rich in various elements, and is an ideal source for preparing doped carbon materials [[27], [28], [29]]. The activate carbon prepared from biomass carbon has been widely used in energy conversion and storage technologies [[30], [31], [32]]. Heteroatom (N, S, P, etc) doping can change the frontier molecular orbital and the charges distribution of doped carbon materials, which can effectively improve the ability of the material to adsorb oxygen [33,34]. The latest research has found that the addition of some metal and heteroatom into the carbon material will improve the ORR properties significantly [26,35]. The main doping metals are iron, cobalt and other transition metal [15,36]. The addition of iron can increase the active sites on the surface of the material, because iron ions can coordinate with nitrogen functional groups to form Fe–N structure [12,37,38].

In this work, we report a kind of high performance ORR catalyst synthesized from waste wine mash, iron chloride and melamine. Interestingly, the material has excellent ORR activity, long-term stability, and good immunity to methanol poisoning.

Section snippets

Preparation

Firstly, waste wine mash (Guilin sanhua co. LTD) was washed for 3 times with deionized water, and then dried at 80 °C. Secondly, 3.0 g wine mash, 3.0 melamine (99.5%, Tianjin Guangfu China), 6.0 g zinc chloride (AR, XiLong Science China) and some iron trichloride (CP, Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co.,Ltd) (Fe: wine mash = 0.05–0.30) are put into a beaker and add 60 ml deionized water to the ultrasound for 30 min, and stand still for 12 h, then dried at 80 °C. Thirdly, put the powder in a quartz

Results and discussion

Fig. 1a shows the effects of different pyrolysis temperatures on ORR of WA-Fe in 0.1 M KOH solution. It can be seen from the diagram that all the samples showed good ORR activity. And we also find that the half-wave potential of 850 °C pyrolysis sample is slightly higher than that of other pyrolysis samples, and 700 °C pyrolysis sample has the lowest half-wave potential among these samples. This indicates that 850 °C may be the optimal temperature for the pyrolysis of waste wine mash. Fig. 1b

Conclusion

In this work, a high performance oxygen reduction catalyst WA-Fe-N was prepared by waste wine mash derived iron and nitrogen doped carbon materials. Compared with commercial Pt/C, the catalyst has a higher ORR activity, durability and immunity to methanol poisoning, in 0.1 M KOH solution. WA-Fe-N has potential applications in fuel cell and metal-air cell. In addition, we explore and provide an effective way to modify waste biomass.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51761006, 51671062 51801041), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFB1502103), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi Province (2018JJA160046, AD17195073, 2017AD23029, 2017JJB150085) and Guangxi Bagui Scholar Foundation.

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