Pulsed Current Boosts Water Electrolysis

摘要

A NOVEL process almost doubles the amount of hydrogen produced per mV of electricity used during the electrolysis of water,report its developers,a team led by researchers at the University of Glasgow,Scotland.The development follows earlier studies by the team,headed by chemistry lecturer Alexey Ganin,which found that transition metal chalcogenides(sulfides,selenides and tellurides)showed considerable promise as electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction(HER).The researchers now have discovered that coating the electrolysis electrodes with molybdenum telluride and then applying a specific pattern of high-current pulses across them increases hydrogen production.The team found that by cycling the current from +2 V to-0.5 V at a current density of-10mA/cm2(a benchmark used to compare HER electrocatalysts)the overpotential improves to 178 ±8 mV from 320 ±12 mV after only 100 cycles.This then stabilizes with no further changes seen over 1,000 cycles.