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Updated: Jul 5, 2025

Electrochemically and Bioelectrochemically Induced Ammonium Recovery
Published on: January 22, 2015
Multi-Functional Formaldehyde-Nitrate Batteries for Wastewater Refining, Electricity Generation, and Production of
Siying An1,2, Zhi-Hao Zhao1, Jun Bu2
1State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710000, P. R. China.
Abstract:
As bulky pollutants in industrial and agricultural wastewater, nitrate and formaldehyde pose serious threats to the human health and ecosystem. Current purification technologies including chemical and bio-/photo-/electro-chemical methods, are generally high-cost, time-consuming, or energy-intensive. Here, we report a novel formaldehyde-nitrate battery by pairing anodic formaldehyde oxidation with cathodic nitrate reduction, which simultaneously enables wastewater purification, electricity generation, and the production of high-value-added ammonia and formate. As a result, the formaldehyde-nitrate battery remarkably exhibits an open-circuit voltage of 0.75 V, a peak power density of 3.38 mW cm-2 and the yield rates of 32.7 mg h-1 cm-2 for ammonia and 889.4 mg h-1 cm-2 for formate. In a large-scale formaldehyde-nitrate battery (25 cm2 ), 99.9 % of nitrate and 99.8 % of formaldehyde are removed from simulated industrial wastewater and the electricity of 2.03 W⋅h per day is generated. Moreover, the design of such a multi-functional battery is universally applicable to the coupling of NO3 - or NO2 - reduction with various aldehyde oxidization, paving a new avenue for wastewater purification and chemical manufacturing.
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