2,5-Furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) has received increasing attention as a near-market platform chemical that can potentially replace terephthalic acid in the production of commercial and high-performance polymers.
Currently, FDCA is mainly obtained from oxidation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). However, these strategies, including thermochemical and electrochemical oxidation are all processes of energy consumption, so how to design and develop a more sustainable conversion process of HMF to FDCA is worth investigating in depth.
Researchers from the Institute of Solid State Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science developed a new type of direct 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) fuel cell using bifunctional nanocatalyst - PtNiSx composite material - with an interface between platinum and nickel sulfide supported on carbon black.
This material is both the cathode and anode catalysts of the cell. Its ORR catalytic activity is enhanced by the close interaction and interface effect between Pt and NiSx nanoparticles.
"The catalyst demonstrates oxidize HMF to the prospective platform chemical FDCA, efficiently and selectively, with a low overpotential,” said WANG Jialu, member of the team, “which is enough to drive the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) reaction to build the fuel cell."
When they assembled the catalyst into an HMF-driven fuel cell, the discharge efficiency is as high as 2.12 mW cm-2 at the current density of 6.8 mA cm-2 at the temperature of 60oC.
"HMF is efficiently converted into FDCA with high selectivity.” said WANG excitedly., “With this strategy, HMF can be continuously converted to value-added product FDCA at the anode, and simultaneously drive ORR in the cathode.”
This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51902312 and 51672277), the young project of Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation (Grant no.1908085QB83) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project (No. 2019M652224).
Link to the paper: Sustainable 2,5-furandicarboxylic synthesis by direct 5-hydroxymethylfurfural fuel cell based on bifunctional PtNiSx catalyst.
Figure 1. Direct 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) oxidation fuel cell based on a bifunctional PtNiSx/CB catalyst not only transformed chemical energy into electric energy but also converted HMF into value-added 2,5-furandicarboxylic. (Image by ZHANG Xian and WANG Jialu)
Contact:
ZHAO Weiwei
Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (http://english.hf.cas.cn/)
Email: annyzhao@ipp.ac.cn