Low carbon footprint biochar composite electrodes for point of need environmental analysis. A promising material to manufacture flexible electrodes.

MOSQUERA-ORTEGA, MÓNICA; FIGEREDO, FEDERICO; ALEJANDRO ARVA; GONZALEZ PABON MARIA JESUS; ALBERT SAAVEDRA; LEONEL LONG; PABLO ARNAL; CORTÓN, EDUARDO; SUSMEL, SABINA

Roma

Congreso; Workshop del Gruppo Interdivisionale Sensori; 2023

Società Chimica Italiana

In recent years, several studies have been showing the presence of heavy metals in sediments and water of the Adriatic Sea, with up to 4 mg/g of Pb+2 being detected. The gold-standard analytical technique to detect traces of Pb+2 is atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). However, its high cost and non-portable characteristics make it a poor election for point of need analysis. Electrochemistry has been successfully applied in the detection of environmental contaminants including heavy metals, proving to be selective, portable, and cost-efficient; to have robust, economic, and simple disposable electrodes reveals as the bottleneck for this method. Carbonized vegetal organic waste retains the porosity of the original materials, having porous (macro, micro and mesoporous) structure, the high surface area the mass transfer facilitates. Likewise, its characteristics and physicochemical properties will depend on the type of raw material, on the pyrolysis conditions, and on the preparation of the material before and after of pyrolysis process (size reduction, cleaning, exfoliation, etc.).