The team led by Prof. LI Wenwei from Suzhou Institute for Advanced Research, University of Science and Technology of China achieved efficient neutral electrosynthesis of hydrogen peroxide with biochar. This work adopted ball-milled biochar (MBC) with rich oxygen-containing functional groups as an environmentally-benign and highly-selective electrocatalyst for hydrogen peroxide production. This work titled Ball-milled Biochar for Efficient Neutral Electrosynthesis of Hydrogen Peroxide was published in Chemical Engineering Journal recently.

Previous methods for massive production of hydrogen peroxide are mostly energy-intensive, involve harsh operation conditions, and generally inefficient under neutral pH condition, which severely limit their widespread application.

To address the issue, mechanical milling of biochar was adopted to introduce abundant oxygen-containing functional groups and defects on the graphene surface, thereby significantly improve the material activity and selectivity for neutral electrosynthesis hydrogen peroxide.

This work exhibits a great potential of the ball milling method for modification biochars to enable efficient neutral electrosynthesis of hydrogen peroxide, which may be further extended to other catalytic applications.

The first authors are postdoctoral researcher GAO Miao and postgraduate WANG Zhenyu, and the corresponding author is Prof. LI Wenwei. The study is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key R&D Program of China and other programs.

Figure 1. Ball Milling Method to Obtain More Surface Defects and Oxygen-Containing Functional Groups

(Image by GAO Miao et al.)

Paper link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2022.134788