Front Cover: Electrochemical Urea Oxidation in Different Environment: From Mechanism to Devices (ChemCatChem 13/2022)

Abstract

The Front Cover shows the reaction mechanism of electrochemical urea oxidation reaction (UOR), vividly reveals the source of urea and required power in the UOR process, and takes the body fluid treatment process of astronauts in the space station as an epitome to show the terminal equipment and application. In their Review, X. Wang, J.-P. Li et al. comprehensively summarized the current progress in electrochemical urea oxidation under different scenarios from human dialysis detoxification, chlorine-mediated nitrogen removal to synergistic alkaline hydrogen production. Significantly, the related evolutions of electrochemical urea oxidation mechanism under these mediates have been described and discussed. Furthermore, the electrolyzers and fuel cells are selected as the typical applications for electrochemical urea oxidation. The basic principles of these integrated electrochemical systems were summarized and some typical prototypes in literature are presented. Then, a summary roadmap of electrochemical urea oxidation in the past 50 years is depicted, and several major challenges are discussed which still have to be addressed. More information can be found in the Review by X. Wang, J.-P. Li et al.