Voltage cycling process for the electroconversion of biomass-derived polyols
Dohyung Kim, Chengshuang Zhou, Miao Zhang, Matteo Cargnello
Abstract
Significance Facilitating electrochemical reactions on heterogeneous surfaces is key to achieving sustainability through renewable electricity-based production of fuels and chemicals. With prior efforts focused on the electroconversion of small molecules (e.g., H 2 O and CO 2 ), advances involving complex molecules that are abundant and of high value, such as biomass-derived compounds, have been limited. This work proposes an electrochemical method, so-called potential cycling, which enables standard Pt nanoparticles to exhibit high activity for electrooxidation of biomass-derived polyols. Turnover is enhanced by orders of magnitude, overcoming the severe limitation of negligible activity exhibited by the same catalyst under typical electrochemical conditions. Moreover, the demonstration of a two-electrode system that couples polyol electrooxidation with water reduction to H 2 highlights the potential applicability of the method.