Metal‐Oxide Heterostructure on Hierarchical Nanoporous Alloy for Highly Efficient Ethylene Glycol Electrooxidation Toward Sustainable PET Upcycling
Abstract
ABSTRACT Renewable electricity‐driven polyethylene terephthalate (PET) hydrolysate electrolysis is a sustainable plastic upcycling technique to produce valuable chemicals, but it usually undergoes insufficient efficiency and selectivity to complicate product separation processes. Here we report nonprecious Co 3 O 4 ‐CuO heterostructure in‐situ integrated on CuCo alloy skeleton as an efficient electrocatalyst to selectively mediate electrooxidation of ethylene glycol in PET hydrolysate to formate and hydrogen for simple and cost‐effective monomer separation. It exhibits exceptional activity (∼930 mA cm −2 at 1.5 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode) and selectivity (>98 %) as a result of the construction of Co─O─Cu linked CoOOH─CuO multiple active regions for *OH and *OHCH 2 CH 2 OH co‐adsorption, which enables the formation of interfacial hydrogen‐bond coordination to accelerate C─H and C─C bond cleavage. This electrocatalyst is successfully applied in PET hydrolysate electrolyser for stable operation at ∼500 mA cm −2 over 1000 h to continuously produce formate and green hydrogen without performance degradation, showing an industrial perspective of plastic upcycling.
Article Details
Authors (12)
Ying Wang
Jing‐Yi Ren
Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials (Jilin University) Ministry of Education School of Materials Science and Engineering Jilin University Changchun China
Zhi‐Lan Zhou
Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials (Jilin University) Ministry of Education School of Materials Science and Engineering Jilin University Changchun China
Rui‐Qi Yao
Key Laboratory of Polyoxometalate Science of the Ministry of Education Faculty of Chemistry Northeast Normal University Changchun China
Xin‐Ying Sun
Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials (Jilin University) Ministry of Education School of Materials Science and Engineering Jilin University Changchun China
Shu‐Pei Zeng
Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials (Jilin University) Ministry of Education School of Materials Science and Engineering Jilin University Changchun China
Gao‐Feng Han
Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials (Jilin University) Ministry of Education School of Materials Science and Engineering Jilin University Changchun China
Hang Shi
Tong‐Hui Wang
Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials (Jilin University) Ministry of Education School of Materials Science and Engineering Jilin University Changchun China
Zi Wen
Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials (Jilin University) Ministry of Education School of Materials Science and Engineering Jilin University Changchun China
Xing‐You Lang
Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials (Jilin University) Ministry of Education School of Materials Science and Engineering Jilin University Changchun China
Qing Jiang