The goal of the proposed research is to investigate electrogenerative processes for use in pollution control and synthetic chemical production form non-petroleum feedstocks. The PI plans to study: (1) Electrogenerative reduction of nitric oxide in concentrated and dilute gas streams under a variety of conditions; also the reduction of 2-methyl-2-nitro-1 propanol in an aqueous electrolyte. (2) The oxidation of ethanol and related compounds both in the gas phase and dissolved in liquid electrolytes. (3) The use of electrochemical methods to study nitric oxide reduction in the presence of special adsorbates. Some aspects of kinetics in operating cells and catalysis associated with the processes proposed here. The operation of electrogenerative cells of improved design together with the incorporation of experimental packed bed electrodes into electrogenerative systems. Interest in electrogenerative nitric oxide reduction stems from two important possibilities. One is that there appear to be a number of factors indicating that electrogenerative reduction of nitric oxide could be developed to replace the present industrial heterogeneous catalytic process in preparing hydroxylamine; another is that selective electrogenerative reduction or a related electrochemical process might be developed to become suitable for removal of NOx from the tail gas of nitric acid production or effluents from stationary power plants. Since more than 5,000,000 tons of NOx (mostly NO originally) are produced in stationary power plants in the United States each year the possibilities for making chemicals through reduction of oxides of nitrogen are impressive. The nitrogen oxides originate from nitrogen compounds in the fuel feed or the reaction of nitrogen and oxygen at elevated temperatures to form NO. Fuel pre- treatment to remove nitrogen compounds is common while controlled burning minimizes nitric oxide formation in combustion and limits the temperatures of combustion. The development of an electrochemical means for removing NOx from effluents and recovering a significant portion of the nitrogenous material as useful chemicals could alter the view and procedures in power plant combustion. One possibility for pollution abatement with respect to NOx then would be controlled removal of sulfur dioxide at some stage without restricting NOx formation during combustion at power plants, followed by effluent feed to a selective electrochemical cell where NOx could be reduced and removed.
