Hydrogen peroxide is an important commodity chemical with a growing demand in many areas, including the electronics industry, wastewater treatment, and paper recycling.
Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a common household chemical, well known for its effectiveness at whitening and disinfecting. It’s also a valuable commodity chemical used to etch circuit boards, treat wastewater, and bleach paper and pulp—a market expected to grow as demand for recycled paper products increases.
Compared to chlorine-based bleaches, hydrogen peroxide is more environmentally benign: the only degradation product of its use is water. However, it’s currently produced through a multistep chemical reaction that consumes significant amounts of energy, generates substantial waste, and requires a catalyst of palladium—a rare and expensive metal. Furthermore, the transport and storage of bulk hydrogen peroxide can be hazardous, making local, on-demand production highly desirable.
Better living through electrochemistry
Scientists seek a way to generate hydrogen peroxide electrochemically—by a much simpler process called the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). This reaction takes oxygen from the air and combines it with water and two electrons to produce H2O2. If this reaction could be efficiently catalyzed, it could enable the disinfection of water at remote locations, or during disaster recovery, using hydrogen peroxide made from local air and water. For this work, the researchers focused on hydrogen peroxide synthesis in alkaline environments, where the reaction bath can be used directly, such as for bleaching or the treatment of acidic waste streams.
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Image: The production of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) from oxygen (O2) was efficiently catalyzed by graphene oxide, a form of graphene characterized by various oxygen defects that act as centers for catalytic activity. Depicted are two types of defects: one in which an oxygen atom bridges two carbon atoms above the graphene plane, and one where oxygen atoms replace carbon atoms within the graphene plane.