Due to widespread water pollution with nitrate ion, methods to remove or lower the nitrate concentrations in water are needed. A novel route to reproducibly electrodeposit copper nano-films, from acidic media onto fluorine-doped tin oxide/glass (Cu@FTO) is described. The films involve elemental copper nanoparticles inside copper agglomerates of larger sizes.  Within 2 h, at ambient potential (-1.8 V), the Cu@FTO electrode reduces aqueous nitrate ions (~40%) more effectively than the benchmark bare Cu metal sheet (~11%). The Cu@FTO is also more selective to N 2 production (~30%) compared to bare Cu sheet with only (~1.1%). Furthermore, the Cu@FTO effectively functions for 7 h and continues to bring down the nitrate ion concentration from 200 ppm to acceptable levels (less than 60 ppm), reproducibly in 5 attempts. The results are promising for future water de-nitration processes using easyto-prepare Cu@FTO electrodes, aiming at producing electrodes for continuous flow reactors at larger scale.

Title

Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry

Publisher

Elsevier

Publisher Country

Netherlands

Indexing

Scopus

Impact Factor

4.464

Publication Type

Prtinted only

Volume

911

Year

2022

Pages

16