The
ever-increasing air pollution has brought the treatment of
nitrogen oxides (NO
X
) to the forefront
of flue gas purification. Wet absorption achieves outstanding NO
X
removal efficiency, but it suffers from an
oxidative deactivation of the NO
X
absorbent,
iron(II) thiochelate, by the residual O2 in flue gases.
To address this critical issue, we demonstrate a regeneration process
to electrochemically reduce the oxidized iron thiochelate into the
original form to effectively bind nitric oxide (NO). A series of voltammetric
techniques were adopted to define the redox potentials of Fe(III)/Fe(II)
thiochelate, represented as 2,3-dimercapto-1-propanesulfonate (DMPS).
The electrochemical reduction of the oxidized iron thiochelate led
to the transformations of disulfide (S–S) to a thiol (R–SH)
and Fe(III) to Fe(II). Both the rate and Faradaic efficiency of electroregeneration
could be enhanced through the adsorption between iron(II) thiochelate
and a copper catalyst as revealed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.
At an optimal condition, recovery efficiencies of 99.8 and 96.1% for
thiol and Fe(II) concentrations were obtained, respectively, on a
Cu electrode at −1.3 V vs Ag/AgCl, thereby restoring 97.9%
of NO absorption capacity. Our findings offer routes to complement
the wet scrubbing NO
X
treatment technology
while preventing the abuse of chemical absorbents.