Journal
BIORESOURCE TECHNOLOGY
Volume 108, Issue -, Pages 89-93Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2011.12.078
Keywords
Low-cost; Oxygen reduction; Nitrogen-doped; Carbon powder; Microbial fuel cell
Funding
- National Creative Research Group
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [50821002]
- National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars [51125033]
- State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology [HC200901]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Given few in-depth studies available on the application of nitrogen-doped carbon powders (NDCP) to air-cathode microbial fuel cells (ACMFCs), a low-cost and durable catalyst of NDCP was prepared and used as cathodic catalyst of ACMFCs. Compared to the untreated carbon powders, the N-doped treatment significantly increased the maximum power density (MPD) of ACMFC. A two-step pretreatment of heat treatment and hydrochloric acid immersion can further obviously increase the MPD. With a reasonably large loading of catalyst, the MPD of NDCP based ACMFC was comparable to that of carbon-supported platinum (Pt/C) based ACMFC, while the cost was dramatically reduced. The pretreatment increased the key nitrogen functional groups, pyridinic-like and pyrrolic-like nitrogen. A third new key nitrogen functional group, nitrogen oxide, was discovered and the mechanism of its contribution was explained. Compared to the inherent deterioration problem of Pt/C. NDCP exhibited high stability and was superior for long-term operation of ACMFCs. (c) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available