Materials design and electrochemical engineering for pollution control
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The ultimate goal of sustainable development is to preserve the Earth for our future generations. Clean water, fertile soil and fresh air are basic necessities for human wellbeing; however, they are among the natural resources most vulnerable to pollution. Using my expertise in materials science, catalysis, and electrochemistry I developed during my doctoral studies, I synthesized unique materials and designed novel reactors to find solutions for various environmental problems. In Chapter 1, I will motivate the need for developing electrochemical technologies for solving environmental problems and give a brief introduction to the thermodynamics and kinetics in electrochemical systems. Chapter 2 will describe my efforts in reducing the energy and chemical demands for organic wastewater treatment. Specifically, I discovered that copper single atoms incorporated in graphitic carbon nitride can catalytically activate hydrogen peroxide to generate hydroxyl radicals, which then non-selectively oxidizes organic pollutants into harmless small molecules. To further eliminate the dependence of the treatment system on H2O2, I developed a H2O2 electrolyser for on-site generation of H2O2 from air, water and renewable energy. These two innovations work in tandem to deliver a wastewater treatment system with substantially reduced energy and chemical inputs compared with conventional advanced oxidation processes. Chapter 3 will demonstrate a method for removal of heavy metals from contaminated soil. This method is composed of a recirculating soil washing system using EDTA solution and an electrochemical filter that removes heavy metals from the EDTA solution by electrodeposition. I discovered that applying an alternating-current bias with an optimal waveform mitigates side reactions and enhances the electrodeposition efficiency of the electrochemical filter compared with applying a direct-current bias. In addition, the regeneration ability of the electrochemical filter makes this platform suitable for recovery of heavy metals from a diverse range of waste streams. Chapter 4 will present a way to promote the catalytic activity of platinum for the degradation of formaldehyde in air, namely by covering the platinum surface with a nanoscale-thin layer of aqueous electrolyte. This discovery was made possible by a platinum-coated nanoporous polyethylene membrane, which is able to construct and retain an evaporation-stable aqueous electrolyte layer over platinum with an effective thickness of just a few tens of nanometers. In a broader context, my work demonstrates that the knowledge obtained through the development of gas diffusion electrodes in fuel cells can be applied to gas-phase heterogeneous catalysis beyond electrochemical systems.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Xu, Jinwei |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Cui, Yi, 1976- |
| Thesis advisor | Cui, Yi, 1976- |
| Thesis advisor | Mitch, William A |
| Thesis advisor | Prinz, F. B |
| Degree committee member | Mitch, William A |
| Degree committee member | Prinz, F. B |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Materials Science and Engineering |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Jinwei Xu. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/ts378cc1735 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Jinwei Xu
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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