Combination of cathodic reduction with adsorption for accelerated removal of Cr(VI) through reticulated vitreous carbon electrodes modified with sulfuric acid-glycine co-doped polyaniline

Improving the reduction kinetics is crucial in the electroreduction process of Cr(VI). In this study, we developed a novel adsorption-electroreduction system for accelerated removal of Cr(VI) by employing reticulated vitreous carbon electrode modified with sulfuric acid-glycine co-doped polyaniline (RVC/PANI-SA-GLY). Firstly, response surface methodology confirmed the optimum polymerization condition of co-doped polyaniline for modifying electrodes (Aniline, sulfuric acid and glycine, respectively, of 0.2 mol/L, 0.85 mol/L, 0.93 mol/L) when untraditional dopant glycine was added. Subsequently, RVC/PANI-SA-GLY showed higher Cr(VI) removal percentages in electroreduction experiments over RVC electrode modified with sulfuric acid doped polyaniline (RVC/PANI-SA) and bare RVC electrode. In contrast to RVC/PANI-SA, the improvement by RVC/PANI-SA-GLY was more significant and especially obvious at more negative potential, lower initial Cr(VI) concentration, relatively less acidic solution and higher current densities, best achieving 7.84% higher removal efficiency with entire Cr(VI) eliminated after 900 s. Current efficiencies were likewise enhanced by RVC/PANI-SA-GLY under quite negative potentials. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) analysis revealed a possible adsorption-reduction mechanism of RVC/PANI-SA-GLY, which greatly contributed to the faster reduction kinetics and was probably relative to the absorption between protonated amine groups of glycine and HCrO4−. Eventually, the stability of RVC/PANI-SA-GLY was proven relatively satisfactory.