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Electrochemical Reduction or Oxidation of a Species

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hanzdolo:
I have a bit of experience electrochemically synthesizing acids from their conjugate bases by capitalizing on the fact that the anion will travel to the anode and the cation to the cathode. I was wondering if there was away to do one or the other instead of both.

I have an idea of trying to reduce by casting the anode into a solid electrolyte and perhaps reducing the the species in a solution or doing vice versa in order to just oxidize a species in solution.

Would that be an effective approach?

chenbeier:
Let say you have sodiumsulfate solution and two electrodes of an inert metal like platinum. The sodium cation travels to cathode and sulfate ion travels to anode. At the cathode sodium cannot be discharged, so hydrogen of the water will be.

2 Na+ + 2 e- + H2O => H2 + 2 Na+OH- on cathode a base will be developed

The same on anode side, Instead of the sulfate the Oxygen of the water will be discharged

2 SO42- +2H2O => 2 H2SO4 + 4 e- + O2 on anode the acid will be devloped

Is this what you mean?

hanzdolo:
I was actually planning to put a lead dioxide anode in some plaster of paris(CaSO4) being its already an electrolyte while using some other metal as the cathode in a very dilute solution of sulfuric acid to reduce the hydrogen to gas forming OH, and no O2 evolution, preventing H3O production due to the anode being locked in the block of plaster.

Being the solution is acidic, I was hoping to produce some dilute H2O2 maybe as a test run then move on to more interesting things.

Interesting you mentioned sulfate, that's exactly how I make sulfuric acid or if sufficient voltage is supplied and the conditions are correct peroxydisulfuric acid.

Actually, I am looking for a way to either reduce or oxidize not both. Though it seems there will be some oxidation taking place due to the porosity of gypsum.

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