Energy-saving and product-oriented hydrogen peroxide electrosynthesis enabled by electrochemistry pairing and product engineering

Hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) electrosynthesis through oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is drawing worldwide attention, whereas suffering seriously from the sluggish oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and the difficult extraction of thermodynamically unstable H 2 O 2 . Herein, we present an electrosynthesis protocol involving coupling ORR-to-H 2 O 2 with waste polyethylene terephthalate (PET) upcycling and the first H 2 O 2 conversion strategy. Ni-Mn bimetal- and onion carbon-based catalysts are designed to catalyze ORR-to-H 2 O 2 and ethylene glycol electrooxidation with the Faradaic efficiency of 97.5% (H 2 O 2 ) and 93.0% (formate). This electrolysis system runs successfully at only 0.927 V to achieve an industrial-scale current density of 400 mA cm −2 , surpassing all reported H 2 O 2 electrosynthesis systems. H 2 O 2 product is upgraded through two downstream routes of converting H 2 O 2 into sodium perborate and dibenzoyl peroxide. Techno-economic evolution highlights the high gross profit of the ORR || PET upcycling protocol over HER || PET upcycling and ORR || OER. This work provides an energy-saving methodology for the electrosynthesis of H 2 O 2 and other chemicals. The development of robust catalysts that could work under industrial-scale current densities bring promise but also a challenge for hydrogen production. Here, the authors report an in situ activation method to produce ferromagnetic ruthenium clusters that can catalyze the hydrogen evolution reaction at high current densities.