Superior stability and methanol tolerance of a metal-free nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon electrocatalyst derived from textile waste

Abstract

Heteroatom-doped carbon materials with hierarchical porous structures are promising alternatives to replace the use of scarce platinum catalysts in fuel cells for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). In this work, nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon is developed from abundantly available textile waste activated with calcium chloride as the pore forming agent and inexpensive urea as the nitrogen precursor followed by pyrolysis. The obtained porous carbon, namely TCPB, has a 3D interconnected hierarchical porous structure (sponge-like) with high surface area (495.97 m2 g−1) and good nitrogen doping (2.80 at%). TCPB exhibits excellent ORR activity (E0 = 0.948 V vs RHE) via the 4-electron transfer pathway with low H2O2 production (6.9–8.91%), superior stability (negligible performance loss) and good tolerance to 3 M methanol when compared to commercial Pt in alkaline media. These results indicate the conversion of textile waste with simple synthesis steps able to produce nitrogen doped porous carbon catalyst with excellent performance thus offering great advantage for fuel cell application.