Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Catalyst for the Electrochemical Reduction of Carbon Dioxide

Abstract

Carbon dioxide is known as the main greenhouse gas, which is enormous produced during human activities. The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide not only reduce the amount of CO 2 , also produce CO 2 to CO, the intermediate for the production of some chemical and fuels. However, the electrochemical reduction process for CO 2 is inhibited due to the lack of a suitable catalyst with high energy efficiency and high conversion rate. [1] The catalysts with the precious metal catalysts, such as Ag, Au, and Zn, Ni received high energy efficiency during carbon monoxide production. Some researchers utilize these metal catalysts for CO 2 reduction process, and received the corresponding results. [2] However, the cost of the precious metal is another urgent issue. In my prior work, the nitrogen-doped graphene is applied as a non-metal catalyst for oxygen reduction reaction process in aidic and alkaline media, finally exhibit high current density and mass activity. [3,4] In this work, we also heat treated carbon with the goal of doping nitrogen into carbon, and apply this nitrogen-doped carbon as catalyst for CO 2 electrochemical reduction process. The nitrogen-doped carbon catalyst exhibit higher current density and higher overpotential than the corresponding carbon, that is to say, the doped nitrogen atoms play an important role for the reduction process. [1] C. E.Tornow, M. R. Thorson, S.Ma, A. A. Gewirth, P. J. Kenis, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 134(48), 19520, (2012). [2] A. Salehikhojin, H. R. M. Jhong, B. A. Rosen, W. Zhu, S. Ma, P. J. A. Kenis, J.phys.chem.c, 117(4), 1627, (2017). [3] J. Liu, D. Takeshi, D. Orejon, K. Sasaki, S. M. Lyth, Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 161(4), F544, (2014). [4] J Liu, K Sasaki, SM Lyth, ECS Transactions 58 (1), 1751 (2013)

Keywords

Identifiers

DOI

10.1149/ma2017-02/8/645

Journal

ECS Meeting Abstracts

Year

2017