Electrochemical reduction of NaBO₂ into NaBH₄ with pulse voltage using the Eu-Co-Ni-B coating electrode

Abstract

To further explore the possibility of the electrochemical reduction of NaBO₂ into NaBH₄, the electrochemical reduction of NaBO₂ into NaBH₄ was fulfilled with pulse voltage using the Eu-Co-Ni-B coating electrode. A simple electroless plating technique was used to prepare the Eu-Co-Ni-B coating electrode. It has been proved that NaBO₂ was converted into NaBH₄ by electrochemical analysis method. The results showed that the method of detection and quantitative analysis of NaBH₄ with gold electrode was feasible (R²=0.98). When the reverse pulse voltage was + 0.5 V, the forward pulse voltage was −1.5 V, the reverse pulse duration was 2 s and the forward pulse duration was 2 s, the concentration of NaBH₄ reaches a maximum of 1.25 × 10⁻⁴mol/L. With the continuous increase of electrolytic time, the concentration of NaBH₄ shows a trend of increasing first and then decreasing. When the electrolytic time was 2 h, the maximum concentration of NaBH₄ reaches 1.61 × 10⁻⁴mol/L.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Electroless plating
• sodium borohydride
• sodium metaborate
• electrochemical reduction

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China #1 under Grant number 21553002 and Qinghai Provincial Science and Technology Department #2 under Grant number 2016-ZJ-753.