A Diamond/Graphene/Diamond Electrode for Waste Water Treatment

Abstract

Boron-doped diamond (BDD) thin film electrodes have great application potential in water treatment. However, the high electrode energy consumption due to high resistance directly limits the application range of existing BDD electrodes. In this paper, the BDD/graphene/BDD (DGD) sandwich structure electrode was prepared, which effectively improved the conductivity of the electrode. Meanwhile, the sandwich electrode can effectively avoid the degradation of electrode performance caused by the large amount of non-diamond carbon introduced by heavy doping, such as the reduction of the electrochemical window and the decrease of physical and chemical stability. The microstructure and composition of the film were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), Raman spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Then, the degradation performance of citric acid (CA), catechol, and tetracycline hydrochloride (TCH) by DGD electrodes was systematically studied by total organic carbon (TOC) and Energy consumption per unit TOC removal (ECTOC). Compared with the single BDD electrode, the new DGD electrode improves the mobility of the electrode and reduces the mass transfer resistance by 1/3, showing better water treatment performance. In the process of dealing with Citric acid, the step current of the DGD electrode was 1.35 times that of the BDD electrode, and the energy utilization ratio of the DGD electrode was 2.4 times that of the BDD electrode. The energy consumption per unit TOC removal (ECTOC) of the DGD electrode was lower than that of BDD, especially Catechol, which was reduced to 66.9% of BDD. The DGD sandwich electrode, as a new electrode material, has good electrochemical degradation performance and can be used for high-efficiency electrocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants.