Catalytically Active Carbon From Cattail Fibers for Electrochemical Reduction Reaction.

Yanyan Liu,Wei Xu,Meifang Hu,Xianli Wu,Jianchun Jiang

doi:10.3389/fchem.2019.00786

Abstract

Catalytically active carbons derived from plant biomass are conducive to the construction of renewable energy source system and utilization of sustainable resources. In this article, natural cattail fibers are used to fabricate porous nitrogen-doped carbon via direct chemical activation and heteroatom modification treatments. The graphene-like sheets from biomass pyrolysis are assembled into three-dimensional carbon frameworks. The chemical activation of KHCO3 generated unique porous structure and N-containing molecules pyrolysis modification provided nitrogen doping atoms. High surface area up to 2,345 m2·g−1 with simultaneous hierarchical pores (from micro to meso and macro) with abundant edge defects are achieved for these carbon materials. These materials have a very large external surface area up to 1,773 m2·g−1. The above strategy exhibits a significant synergistic effect on the improvement of catalytic properties toward hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen reduction reaction. The small over potentials and Tafel slopes of these catalytically active carbons demonstrate excellent potential applications in renewable energy conversion and storage systems. This research established a new link among environmental improvement, biomass conversion and renewable energy utilization.

Highlights

The carbon cycle in nature provides us with a useful resource and energy warehouse
The carbon materials (HPCF) possessing hierarchical pores are obtained during the chemical activation process
Highly efficient catalytically active carbon (CAC) material can be synthesized by using natural cattail fibers as raw materials via direct chemical activation and following N-doping modification treatments

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The carbon cycle in nature provides us with a useful resource and energy warehouse. The useful content should be taken out from the carbon cycle based on plant biomass for human society development. The harvest of renewable energy, extraction of chemical resource, and fabrication of functional material from bulk biomass is a promising research direction It is one of the important industrial ways for plant biomass conversion to produce commercial activated carbon with adsorption properties and supports for heterogeneous catalyst active components (Deng et al, 2016; Fan et al, 2018; Gao et al, 2018). Active Carbons From Biomass with atomic-molecular level adjustable structures, excellent electronic conductivity, tailorable physicochemical properties and robust mechanical-chemical stability, exhibit promising potential of building an efficient catalytic system (Liu et al, 2018; Sun et al, 2018) Several electrochemical processes, such as the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), are of importance for the building of efficiently harvest, storage, and conversion system for renewable energy (Huang et al, 2018; Xiao et al, 2018; Yang et al, 2019). The general value of Cs is 20.9 μF·cm−2 for the ECSA calculation of carbon materials

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

CONCLUSIONS

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT