Electrosynthesis of urea from nitrite and CO2 over oxygen vacancy-rich ZnO porous nanosheets

By Nannan Meng, Yanmei Huang, Yang Liu, Yifu Yu, Bin Zhang. 2021

208 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary Urea electrosynthesis under mild conditions shows great potential to conquer the conventional manufacturing industry with huge energy consumption. Here, self-supported oxygen vacancy-rich ZnO (ZnO-V) porous nanosheets are prepared using the electroreduction method and adopted as an efficient catalyst for aqueous urea electrosynthesis by using CO2 and nitrite contaminants as feedstocks. The urea Faradaic efficiency of ZnO-V achieves 23.26% at −0.79 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), which is almost 3 times as high as that of ZnO (8.10%). Liquid chromatography is developed for quantitative analysis of urea. The combined results of online differential electrochemical mass spectrometry (DEMS) and in situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy unveil a possible coupling pathway of NH2∗ and COOH∗ intermediates for urea formation. Our work opens an avenue for rational construction of efficient electrocatalysts for urea electrosynthesis and broadens the scope of products available from nitrite and CO2 reduction.

Subfields: Catalysis, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/88ecad21a3b276ff7139490e3f48c9ae1c734f24

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Catalysis

1. P. Strasser
2. A. Varela
3. Karen Chan
4. J. Rossmeisl
5. A. Bagger
6. B. Roldán Cuenya
7. Jens K. Nørskov

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. P. Strasser
2. Karen Chan
3. A. Varela
4. B. Roldán Cuenya
5. I. Stephens
6. J. Rossmeisl
7. M. Koper
8. A. Bagger

Citations in the corpus

• 2022 roadmap on low temperature electrochemical CO2 reduction (2022, background): “Materials such as TiO2/Nafion films [238] and oxygen vacancy-rich ZnO (ZnO-V) porous nanosheets [239] have been tested with encouraging FEs (40% and 26%, respectively).”