Search Results (2)

The utilization of carbon dioxide is a major incentive for the growing field of carbon capture. Carbon dioxide could be an abundant building block to generate higher-value chemical products. Herein, we fabricated a porous copper electrode capable of catalyzing the reduction of carbon dioxide into higher-value products, such as ethylene, ethanol and propanol. We investigated the formation of the foams under different conditions, not only analyzing their morphological and crystal structure, but also documenting their performance as a catalyst. In particular, we studied the response of the foams to CO₂ electrolysis, including the effect of urea as a potential additive to enhance CO₂ catalysis. Before electrolysis, the pristine and urea-modified foam copper electrodes consisted of a mixture of cuboctahedra and dendrites. After 35 min of electrolysis, the cuboctahedra and dendrites underwent structural rearrangement affecting catalysis performance. We found that alterations in the morphology, crystallinity and surface composition of the catalyst were conducive to the deactivation of the copper foams. Full article

Anaerobic bioelectrochemical digestion (ABD) is widely used for treating wastewater and recovering energy. The electrode is the key point for ABD system, which was sparsely studied with food waste. In this study, a carbon-modified copper foam was fabricated with copper foam and multiple wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) through electrophoretic deposition and screen-printing methods. The carbon-modified copper foam electrode was investigated in an ABD reactor for food waste. The features of bioelectrochemical methane production, process stability, and electrochemical characterization were evaluated in the ABD reactor, and were compared to the control reactor without equipping electrode. The ultimate methane production reached 338.1 mL CH₄/L in the ABD reactor, which was significantly higher than the 181.0 mL CH₄/L of the control reactor. The methane produced from the electrode was 137.8 mL CH₄/L, which was up to 40.8% of total methane production in the ABD reactor. It was attributed to the electroactive bacteria that were enriched and activated by the carbon-modified copper foam electrode, further activating the direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) pathways for methane production. The cyclic voltammetry (CV) analysis showed higher redox peaks, which is one of the pieces of evidence for the enrichment of electroactive bacteria. The carbon-modified copper foam electrode has the advantages of both carbon and metal materials, and demonstrated a high possibility for use in bioelectrochemical methane production for food waste. Full article