Direct seawater electrolysis by adjusting the local reaction environment of a catalyst

Jiaxin Guo, Yao Zheng, Zhenpeng Hu, Caiyan Zheng, Jing Mao, Kun Du, Mietek Jaroniec, Shi-Zhang Qiao () and Tao Ling ()
Additional contact information
Jiaxin Guo: Tianjin University
Yao Zheng: The University of Adelaide
Zhenpeng Hu: Nankai University
Caiyan Zheng: Nankai University
Jing Mao: Tianjin University
Kun Du: Tianjin University
Mietek Jaroniec: Kent State University
Shi-Zhang Qiao: The University of Adelaide
Tao Ling: Tianjin University

Nature Energy, 2023, vol. 8, issue 3, 264-272

Abstract: Abstract The use of vast amounts of high-purity water for hydrogen production may aggravate the shortage of freshwater resources. Seawater is abundant but must be desalinated before use in typical proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers. Here we report direct electrolysis of real seawater that has not been alkalised nor acidified, achieving long-term stability exceeding 100 h at 500 mA cm−2 and similar performance to a typical PEM electrolyser operating in high-purity water. This is achieved by introducing a Lewis acid layer (for example, Cr2O3) on transition metal oxide catalysts to dynamically split water molecules and capture hydroxyl anions. Such in situ generated local alkalinity facilitates the kinetics of both electrode reactions and avoids chloride attack and precipitate formation on the electrodes. A flow-type natural seawater electrolyser with Lewis acid-modified electrodes (Cr2O3–CoOx) exhibits the industrially required current density of 1.0 A cm−2 at 1.87 V and 60 °C.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01195-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natene:v:8:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1038_s41560-023-01195-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nenergy/

DOI: 10.1038/s41560-023-01195-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Energy is currently edited by Fouad Khan

More articles in Nature Energy from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().