Traditional earth-abundant coal as new energy materials to catalyze the oxygen reduction reaction in alkaline solution
By Chen, Xingxing; Huang, Xinning; Wang, Tao; Barwe, Stefan; Xie, Kunpeng; Kayran, Yasin Ugur; Wintrich, Daniela; Schuhmann, Wolfgang; Masa, Justus
Published in Electrochimica Acta
2016
Abstract
Abstract Coal is an earth-abundant energy resource, however, its direct combustion results in serious environmental pollution. Therefore, it becomes important to design value-added products from coal and to maximize its value chain. Herein, brown coal was used to develop non-precious metal catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in fuel cells as green energy conversion systems. The brown coal was first pretreated with different acids, followed by N-doping at 800