Electrochemical reactors for NO decomposition. Basic aspects and a future

Abstract

The electrochemical reduction of nitric oxide in the presence of the excess oxygen was reviewed. It was shown that the selectivity and activity of the cathodes is strongly dependent on the composition and on the microstructure of the cathode material. A concept of electrochemical reactor with multilayer electro-catalytic electrode was proposed and successfully designed in Advanced Manufacturing Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Nagoya, Japan. The typical values of current efficiency in such electrochemical reactors are of the order of 10–20% at gas composition: 1,000 ppm NO and 2% O2 balanced in He and at gas flow rate 50 ml/min. The value of current efficiency depends on the functional multi-layer electrode composition, structure, and operating temperature. Such electrochemical reactors show the value of NO/O2 selectivity (ν sel) higher than 5 (ν sel > 5) at intermediate temperature and up to ν sel = 25 at low temperature operation. It was shown that multilayer electro-catalytic electrode should consist at list from three main functional layers: cathode, electro-catalytic electrode, covering layer, in order to operate as an electrode with high selectivity.