(Photo)electrochemical formate production from biomass by using copper oxide as a selective electrocatalyst Ping-Chang Chuang and Yi-Hsuan Lai National Cheng Kung University, Chinese Taipei Platform chemicals such as formic acid derived by (photo)electrochemical valorisation of biomass-derived intermediates is a sustainable process. We recently reported an inexpensive and Earth-abundant CuO synthesised by a scalable approach acts as an efficient electrocatalyst for the selective production of formate from biomass [1] . Significantly, the CuO electrocatalyst demonstrates a high faradaic efficiency of formate of 94.1 ± 1.5% at 1.5 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode from glucose oxidation. Detailed product analyses suggest that one glucose is oxidised to one formate and one pentose at the potentials positive than the flat band potential of CuO. In addition to the glucose, the electrolysis of cellulose and “real world” biomass waste was also investigated. Despite the low solubility of the raw biomass, a moderate faradaic efficiency of 41.4 ± 9.7% was observed when using waste rice straw as feedstock. Furthermore, CuO can act as a co-catalyst for the photoelectrochemical production of formate. The faradaic efficiency for formate production was enhanced to 97.3 ± 2.8% over a CuO- coated hematite photoanode. References 1. P.-C. Chuang and Y.-H. Lai. Selective production of formate over a CuO electrocatalyst by electrochemical and photoelectrochemical biomass valorisation. Catal. Sci. Technol. 2022,12, 6375-6383.
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