Facing seawater splitting challenges by regeneration with Ni-Mo-Fe bifunctional electrocatalyst for hydrogen and oxygen evolution
Hydrogen, produced by water splitting, has been proposed as one of the main green energy vectors of the future if produced from renewable energy sources. However, to substitute fossil fuels, large amounts of pure water are necessary, scarce in many world regions. In this work, we fabricate efficient...
| Autores: | , , , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ddd.uab.cat:271928 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://ddd.uab.cat/record/271928 https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1002/cssc.202100194 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Alloys Degradation Regeneration Seawater Watersplitting |
| Sumario: | Hydrogen, produced by water splitting, has been proposed as one of the main green energy vectors of the future if produced from renewable energy sources. However, to substitute fossil fuels, large amounts of pure water are necessary, scarce in many world regions. In this work, we fabricate efficient and earth-abundant electrodes, study the challenges of using real seawater, and propose an electrode regeneration method to face undesired salt deposition. Ni-Mo-Fe trimetallic electrocatalyst is deposited on non-expensive graphitic carbon felts both for hydrogen (HER) and oxygen evolution reactions (OER) in seawater and alkaline seawater. Cl pitting and the chlorine oxidation reaction are suppressed on these substrates and alkalinized electrolyte. Precipitations on the electrodes, mainly CaCO, originating from seawater-dissolved components have been studied, and a simple regeneration technique is proposed to rapidly dissolve undesired deposited CaCO in acidified seawater. Under alkaline conditions, Ni-Mo-Fe-based catalyst is found to reconfigure, under cathodic bias, into Ni-Mo-Fe alloy with a cubic crystalline structure and Ni : Fe(OH) redeposits whereas, under anodic bias, it is transformed into a follicular Ni:FeOOH structure. High productivities over 300 mA cm and voltages down to 1.59 V@10 mA cm for the overall water splitting reaction have been shown, and electrodes are found stable for over 24 h without decay in alkaline seawater conditions and with energy efficiency higher than 61.5 % which makes seawater splitting promising and economically feasible. |
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