Recovery of Waste-Activated Carbon for Synthesizing High-Efficiency ORR Electrocatalyst

Ziyu Tang, Haowen Li, Xiaojing Jia, Fawei Lin () and Kai Li
Additional contact information
Ziyu Tang: Tianjin Key Lab of Biomass/Wastes, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Haowen Li: School of Science and Engineering, Shenzhen Institute of Aggregate Science and Technology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen 518172, China
Xiaojing Jia: Tianjin Key Lab of Biomass/Wastes, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Fawei Lin: Tianjin Key Lab of Biomass/Wastes, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Kai Li: Tianjin Key Lab of Biomass/Wastes, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China

Energies, 2025, vol. 18, issue 7, 1-15

Abstract: Activated carbon used to adsorb organic pollutants and heavy metals in wastewater is often used to prepare precursor materials to avoid re-polluting the environment. Non-precious metal and heteroatom co-doped electrocatalysts have emerged as promising alternatives to Pt-based catalysts due to their high catalytic activity and remarkable stability. This has greatly developed the ORR process in the field of energy storage, which is restricted due to the high price of Pt-based catalysts. In this study, bamboo shavings were pre-activated to synthesize carbon materials, which were subsequently mixed with an oil phase to simulate “waste-activated carbon”. The results demonstrate that the modified waste-activated carbon exhibits a high specific surface area, a well-developed porous structure, and characteristic element doping, which collectively contribute to the effective construction of active sites. Furthermore, the material displays ORR electrocatalytic performance that surpasses that of commercial Pt/C catalysts. In this study, a high-performance ORR electrocatalyst was successfully synthesized through the retreatment of “waste-activated carbon”. Building on this achievement, this study offers a novel perspective and contributes to advancing research on the resource utilization and sustainable treatment of waste-activated carbon.

Keywords: renewable carbon material; activation; oxygen reduction reaction; hierarchical porous; “Fe-Nx-C” structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/7/1666/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/7/1666/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:18:y:2025:i:7:p:1666-:d:1621468

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().