High-Performance Electrochemical Nitrate Reduction to Ammonia under Ambient Conditions Using a FeOOH Nanorod Catalyst

Electrocatalytic nitrate reduction is promising as an environmentally friendly process to produce high value-added ammonia with simultaneous removal of nitrate, a widespread nitrogen pollutant, for water treatment; however, efficient electrocatalysts with high selectivity are required for ammonia formation. In this work, FeOOH nanorod with intrinsic oxygen vacancy supported on carbon paper (FeOOH/CP) is proposed as a high-performance electrocatalyst for converting nitrate to ammonia at room temperature. When operated in a 0.1 M phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) solution with 0.1 M NaNO3, FeOOH/CP is able to obtain a large NH3 yield of 2419 mu g h(-1) cm(-2) and a surprisingly high Faradic efficiency of 92% with excellent stability. Density functional theory calculation demonstrates that the potential-determining step for nitrate reduction over FeOOH (200) is *NO2H + H+ + e(-) -> *NO + H2O.

Automated summary

This study introduces a high-performance electrocatalyst FeOOH/CP, which efficiently converts nitrate to ammonia at room temperature, with high ammonia yield and remarkably high Faradic efficiency.