Preparation Of Nitrogen-doped Carbon Nanocube Material And Its Application In Cathode Of Microbial Fuel Cells

Microbial fuel cells (MFC) is a newly generate electricity equipment that can convert chemical energy into electricity directly with the aid of microorganisms as catalysts. It is the production of the microbia and battery technology. It is not only a new technology of treating wastewater,but also a new clean energy. It play an important role in solving the problem of water pollution and energy at the same time.At present, due to the low power output, high cost and other issues limiting MFC application in the actual production, while the cathode material is one of the main factors that affecting the power output and cost of MFC. To address this issue, nitrogen-doped carbon nanocube (N-CNT) and metal composite material of carbon and nitrogen (Fe/N/C) which can be used as low-cost and efficient cathode catalyst have been prepared in this study.Meanwhile, selection the highest catalytic as cathode single chamber MFC was built for the degradation of crystal violet wastewaterIn this paper, two types of nitrogen-doped carbon nanocube (HNO3-CNT? HH-CNT)prepared by the postprocessing using nitric acid or hydrazine hydrate modified carbon nanotubes. The nitrogen content of HNO3-CNT or HH-CNT was about 2.58% or 1.34% from XPS analysis. Two types of nitrogen-doped carbon nanocube electrodes exhibited excellent catalytic performance for reduction of oxygen and stability through the electrochemical performance tested results by CV. We build MFC by using HNO3-CNT, HH-CNT or CNT as cathode catalyst, respectively, to examine the production performance of different cathode materials in MFC. The results show that the maximum power density of HNO3-CNT or HH-CNT cathode MFC reached 912 mW/m~2, 835 mW/m~2, which was increased by 63.75%,49.96% compared with untreated CNT cathode MFC (557 mW/m~2), respectively. HNO3-CNT or HH-CNT cathode MFC can efficiently degrade organic substrates in the production of electricity at the same time and the COD degradation were followed apparent first-order kinetics.Fe/N/C composite was synthesized by complex reduction method and pyrolysis rout,respectively. The as-prepared material prepared by the latter method has a better redox catalytic performance compared to the former one. The performance of electrode material with different reaction materials ratio prepared by pyrolysis method was investigated. The results indicate that the optimal performance can be obtained when the ratio FeN/C=2/2. The maximum power density and most stable output voltage of 1868 mW/m~2 and 0.744V can be obtained, respectively, which is 1.16 and 1.17 times high than that of Pt/C cathode MFCThe waste water of crystal violent was degraded by constructing single chamber air cathode microbial fule cell systems,which take FeN/C=2/2 as the cathode catalyst. The MFC in closed for the removal of crystal violet effect is better than the open anaerobic state. With the increase of the concentration of crystal violet in the mixed matrix, MFC removal of crystal violet decrease. When the concentration of between 0 and 75 mg/L, the MFC has a ultra-high removal efficiency above 90% for the crystal violent.