Electrodeposition preparation of Ce-doped Ti/SnO2-Sb electrodes by using selected addition agents for efficient electrocatalytic oxidation of methylene blue in water

Abstract This paper describes assembling Ce-doped Ti/SnO2-Sb (CTSS) electrodes via electrodeposition by using glucose, citric acid, tartaric acid, oxalic acid and nothing (for comparison) as addition agent, respectively, for highly efficient organic wastewater treatment. The physicochemical properties of five CTSS electrodes were characterized by using the scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscope and electrochemical measurements. The measurement using SEM exhibited the highly porous coralline-like surface morphology of CTSS(glucose) electrode. It is attributed to fewer carboxylic groups in glucose than in other four addition agents. LSV curves showed that the oxygen evolution overpotentials were 2.36 V, 2.29 V, 2.35 V, 2.25 V, and 2.14 V for CTSS(glucose), CTSS(citric acid), CTSS(tartaric acid), CTSS(oxalic acid) and CTSS(nothing), respectively, indicating that using glucose as addition agent is conductive to electrode preparation for efficient electrocatalytic oxidation of organic wastewaters. The electrocatalytic oxidation removal of methylene blue (MB) was investigated in a 0.5 M H2SO4 and 0.1 M Na2SO4 aqueous solution. The color removal efficiencies after one-hour electrolysis treatment with CTSS(glucose) electrode in this aqueous medium at the current densities of 20, 40, 60 mA cm−2 were all more than 99%. It was found that the CTSS(glucose) electrode has more sufficient active catalytic sites and a service life of 23 h in an accelerated life test, which is longer than the other CTSS ones. Adding glucose into the electroplate liquid to assemble CTSS electrode did achieve more obvious decolorization.