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 electro-deposit copper nano-films, with no need for additional treatments or additives, 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 N₂ 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 easy-to-prepare Cu@FTO electrodes, aiming at producing electrodes for continuous flow reactors at larger scale.

العنوان

Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry

الناشر

Elsevier

بلد الناشر

هولندا

Indexing

Thomson Reuters

معامل التأثير

4,6

نوع المنشور

مطبوع فقط

المجلد

911

السنة

2022

الصفحات

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