High stability pyrolyzed vitamin B12 as a non-precious metal catalyst of oxygen reduction reaction in microbial fuel cells
Non-precious metal catalysts are favored for use in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) as they catalyze the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) at the cathode and are low-cost. In this work, pyrolyzed Vitamin B12 (py-B12/C), supported by carbon black, was utilized as the cathode catalyst in solid phase MFC. Th...
Saved in:
Published in | RSC advances Vol. 3; no. 35; pp. 15375 - 15381 |
---|---|
Main Authors | , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
01.01.2013
|
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
Cover
Loading…
Summary: | Non-precious metal catalysts are favored for use in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) as they catalyze the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) at the cathode and are low-cost. In this work, pyrolyzed Vitamin B12 (py-B12/C), supported by carbon black, was utilized as the cathode catalyst in solid phase MFC. The py-B12/C has the highest proportion of quaternary N-type nitrogen than pristine B12, which promotes ORR activity during the pyrolysis at 700 degree C, at which temperature the ORR ability is maximized. Py-B12/C has an electron transfer number of 3.85 in O sub(2)-saturated 0.05 M phosphate buffered saline (PBS) solution, which is very close to that of Pt/C, which is 3.89. Steady potential tests of py-B12/C and Pt/C reveal that the former does not decay but the latter decays by 24% in 100 h. According to an MFC test, Pt/C has a higher voltage initially but this rapidly falls to zero after ten days owing to the blocking effect of OH sub(ads) species on Pt surface. Notably, an MFC using py-B12/C exhibits excellent power density of 22.6 mW m super(-2) and an operational period of more than 30 days, which is longer than that using Pt/C. |
---|---|
Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 2046-2069 2046-2069 |
DOI: | 10.1039/c3ra42517g |