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Efficient hydrogen production and electricity generation in solar-driven single-photoelectrode photocatalytic fuel cell

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Abstract

This work reports a novel TiO2/g-C3N4 photoanode-based photocatalytic fuel cell (PFC) designed to convert chemical energy from simulated wastewater. The g-C3N4 modified TiO2 nanorod was successfully synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method. The results indicated that the maximum photocurrent density reached 2.44 mA cm-2 at 1.23 V vs. RHE by 1.167 g L-1 g-C3N4 loaded TiO2 composite. On the basis of analysis, the photoelectrochemical mechanism of the composite photoanode was proposed. This mainly demonstrated that the composite photoanode increases the electron donor density and boosts charge separation efficiency. In addition, the power density and hydrogen production of the proposed PFC were enhanced by 5.37 and 1.49 times compared to TiO2 photoanode-based PFC. To find the origins of the excellent performance of PFC, the influence of the organic compounds were investigated. The ESR measurement results indicated that the organic matter was captured by the photoexcited holes directly to facilitate the charge separation. The achieved power density and hydrogen production of 0.14 mW cm-2 and 21.60 μmol h-1 cm-2 were measured using RhB as the model pollutant, which was 2.42 and 1.23 times higher than the experiments with PBS electrolyte. This study proposed a novel PFC system converts the organic pollutant to the hydrogen and the electricity.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Hubei Province Natural Science Foundation (No. 2023AFB938). Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province Project (No. ZR2021QE067). National Natural Science Foundation of China Project (No. 52300099).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Wuhan Polytechnic University, Hubei, Wuhan, P.R. China

    Jianghao Wang, Ziyue Lv, Yun He, Shunxi Zhang & Jianfen Li

  2. School of Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, P.R. China

    Jianghao Wang

  3. College Safety and Environmental Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Shandong, Qingdao, P.R. China

    Yizhen Zhang

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Wang, J., Lv, Z., Zhang, Y. et al. Efficient hydrogen production and electricity generation in solar-driven single-photoelectrode photocatalytic fuel cell. Catal Lett (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10562-024-04701-2

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