A technology that can produce hydrogen peroxide, an industrial chemical widely used in the chemical and medical industries as well as in the semiconductor industry, has been developed in an eco-friendly manner.
Kim Jong-min, the principal researcher at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) Extreme Materials Research Center, and Han Sang-soo, the principal researcher at the Computational Science Research Center, announced on the 9th that they, along with researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI), have developed a catalyst that converts oxygen in the air into hydrogen peroxide.
Hydrogen peroxide is one of the world's top 100 industrial chemicals, widely used in various fields. Currently, hydrogen peroxide is mainly produced through the anthraquinone process, which has several issues, including high energy consumption, the use of expensive palladium catalysts, and environmental pollution due to byproducts.
Recently, an eco-friendly method that utilizes inexpensive carbon catalysts to electrochemically reduce oxygen to produce hydrogen peroxide has gained attention. However, this method has the limitation of requiring a high-purity oxygen gas injection, resulting in high expenses, and the generated hydrogen peroxide is mainly produced in an unstable alkaline electrolyte environment.
The KIST research team addressed these issues by introducing mesopores to the carbon catalyst. Mesopores refer to pores that fall within the size range of 2 to 50 nanometers (nm; 1 nm equals 1 billionth of a meter), which play a significant role in increasing the surface area of materials or facilitating molecular movement within materials.
The research team synthesized boron-doped carbon with mesopores of about 20 nm by reacting carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, with sodium borohydride, a powerful reducing agent, and selectively removing the calcium carbonate particles. As a result of utilizing this as a catalyst for hydrogen peroxide production, they confirmed that the tortuous surface characteristics formed by the mesopores exhibit excellent catalytic activity even in neutral electrolyte environments where hydrogen peroxide generation is difficult.
The research team stated that when applying the boron-doped mesoporous carbon catalyst to a hydrogen peroxide mass production reactor, it could achieve a production efficiency of over 80%, close to commercialization. They also succeeded in producing a hydrogen peroxide solution with a concentration of 3.6%, exceeding the medical hydrogen peroxide concentration (3%).
However, to commercialize this technology, a large-scale electrochemical reaction system must be developed separately. The researchers plan to begin research on material and system development for commercialization in the future.
Kim Jong-min noted, "The mesoporous carbon catalyst technology that produces hydrogen peroxide in neutral electrolytes using oxygen from the air we breathe is more practical than existing catalysts and will accelerate industrialization."
References
Advanced Materials (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202415712