A spontaneous fuel cell to treat benzoic acid in water and generate electricity simultaneously at ambient conditions

作者：Huo, Jing; Cao, Limei; Yang, Ji^*

来源：Research on Chemical Intermediates, 2015, 41(11): 9015-9028.

DOI：10.1007/s11164-015-1944-2

• Fuel cell
• Electrochemical reactor
• Organic wastewater
• Benzoic acid
• Electrochemistry

A spontaneous fuel cell is developed in this paper to treat benzoic acid, a precursor of several organic pollutants found in agro-industrial effluents. The innovative concepts behind the cell design are that at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, the reactor could accelerate the removal of benzoic acid and the generation of electricity. Experiments were performed to investigate the influences of hydrogen peroxide concentration, flow rate, electrolyte concentration, and the pH value of hydrogen peroxide solution to optimize the operating parameters for the spontaneous fuel cell, while chemical oxygen demand analysis was performed to assess the extent of degradation. It was found that in the presence of benzoic acid (0.025 mol l(-1)), H2O2 (10 %) and a flow rate of 13.5 ml per minute, the voltage reaches a stable value of 65 mV, and the current is 100 mu A during the early stage of reaction, which is slightly lower than that of some microbial fuel cells. However, the microbial fuel cell is rather problematic because of its long treatment period, inhibitory properties, and secondary pollution. These results show that the spontaneous fuel cell is promising for energy reclamation with the removal of organics and might lead to consideration of the electrochemical role in wastewater treatment.

• 出版日期2015-11
• 单位华东理工大学