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.