Nitrogen Doped Carbon Nanomaterial as Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Acidic Media: To use in Electro‐Fenton
Ramakrishnan Kamaraj, Noel Nesakumar, Subramanyan Vasudevan
Abstract
Abstract The doped heteroatom in carbon matrices plays a crucial role in the electro‐Fenton process. Here, we investigated the electrocatalytic activities of the acetonitrile –derived (by flame synthesis) nitrogen‐doped carbon nanomaterials for the two‐electron oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in the electro‐Fenton process, focusing on the peroxide generation and degradation of chlorophenoxy acid herbicides from contaminated water. Besides, we studied the anodic oxidation of chlorophenoxy acid herbicides from the water, and comparatively electrochemically generated OH radicals yield the higher degradation efficiency. To study the fundamental property, the linear sweep voltammetry studies of nitrogen‐doped carbon cathode material exhibits the excellent electrocatalytic activity towards 2 electron transfer oxygen reduction reaction in acidic conditions and successfully applied for the degradation of herbicides This work provides a feasible synthetic approach for scalable production of acetonitrile derived high‐performance carbon‐based ORR catalyst. The degradation results point out that, nitrogen‐doped carbon nanomaterial is one of the promising cathode materials for the degradation of organic pollutants by electro‐Fenton process