Electrocatalysts Prepared By Galvanic Displacement for Selective Glycerol Oxidation

Abstract

Oxidation of alcohol has been an important topic in fuel cells as it can lead to value-added chemical synthesis. A particular alcohol of interest is glycerol. This is because glycerol is a major side product generated from the biodiesel. Moreover, it has three hydroxyl groups making it a highly functionalized molecule. However, the three-alcohol groups provide low selectivity and activity towards high value-added products. Electrochemistry has shown to be an effective method to increase activity and selectivity.Monometallic catalyst such as gold, platinum, and palladium are used for many alcohol oxidations. However, they typically suffer from low selectivity and poisoning by carbon monoxide. This is a problem with oxidation of glycerol since one of its product is carbon monoxide. This study focuses on the composition of the electrode to enhance the selectivity and activity of glycerol using galvanic displacement method. Previous research has shown bimetallic systems have more selective and activity. Some research shown pairing bismuth with platinum facilitates the oxidation of the secondary alcohol position.Galvanic displacement has found to be a successful technique to fabricate a series of platinum-bismuth and bismuth-platinum electrodes were characterized by TEM, XPS, and CV. By using this technique, the results have shown it to be an efficient method to design a bimetallic platinum-bismuth electrode system that is tunable and selective towards glyceric acid. The bimetallic system is highly advantageous, easy to manipulate, and has favorable interactions between the platinum-bismuth system.