An efficient and affordable catalyst could improve access to clean drinking water in remote areas.
Hydrogen peroxide is commonly used to treat water and as a disinfectant, but it is synthesized in large-scale facilities at high concentrations that require dilution before use. Simon Freakley and Graham Hutchings at Cardiff University, UK, and their colleagues created a series of catalysts that can be used to make small batches of diluted hydrogen peroxide directly from hydrogen and oxygen.
An earlier version of their catalyst used gold and palladium supported on activated carbon. Their latest version replaces gold with cheaper materials, including tin, zinc and nickel, but it maintains the same high reaction efficiency of more than 95%, and uses commercially available support materials such as titanium dioxide.
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Catalyst for clean drinking water. Nature 531, 11 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/531011b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/531011b
