The preparation of LaOCl doped carbon-based catalysts and their oxygen reduction reaction performance

Abstract

Oxygen reduction reaction is a key reaction in fuel cells, and it is crucial to seek catalysts with better oxygen reduction performance. Rare earth metals are applied to the oxygen reduction reaction because of their special electronic structure. La in rare earth elements is an F-region element, which has a typical 4f electron configuration, and can transfer 4f electrons between f-f configuration and f-d configuration to form a unique bond, which can show good electrochemical properties. Based on the regional characteristics of Inner Mongolia, in this paper, a rare earth composite biomass carbon based catalyst was synthesized by high temperature calcination and other operations using milk as a biomass based carbon source and NaCl as a template agent. The catalyst was optimized and it was determined that the H2O2 yield of LaOCl-NPC catalyst reached 70 % at a milk to NaCl ratio of 1:10, metal mass ratio of 6 % and calcination temperature of 1200 °C, and showed some ability to treat pollutants in water after the addition of organic pollutants.

Keywords

• Oxygen reduction reactions
• Electrochemical oxidation
• Organic pollutants
• Rare earth elements