Electrocatalyst allows low-cost production of hydrogen from water Wednesday, 30 March 2016

Researchers at Griffith University have found a way to use carbon as an electrocatalyst in the process of producing hydrogen from water, replacing the much more costly platinum.

Professor Xiangdong Yao and his team from Griffith’s Queensland Micro- and Nanotechnology Centre made the breakthrough, which is expected to have implications for electrochemical hydrogen production, and flow-on effects for other renewable energy technologies including water splitting and hydrogen-based fuel cells.

There is currently a strong push for the use of hydrogen as a fuel for motive power, including cars and boats and on-board auxiliary power, for stationary power generation, and as an energy storage medium.

Hydrogen today can be produced in two ways: either by steam reforming of natural gas, or by splitting water, in the process of water electrolysis. The former process produces carbon dioxide, and therefore contributes to global warming.

In this latter process, the hydrogen evolution reaction requires the use of an electrocatalyst.

According to Professor Yao, despite tremendous efforts, exploring cheap, efficient and durable electrocatalysts for the process still remains a great challenge.

Currently, platinum is the most active and stable electrocatalyst for the process, but it is very costly, and in low abundance, which limits its large-scale commercial applications.

The researchers developed a carbon-based catalyst, which contains a small amount of nickel, and can completely replace platinum for efficient and cost-effective hydrogen production from water.

“In our research, we synthesise a nickel-carbon-based catalyst, from carbonisation of metal-organic frameworks, to replace currently best-known platinum-based materials for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution,” explained Professor Yao.

“This nickel-carbon-based catalyst can be activated to obtain isolated nickel atoms on the graphitic carbon support when applying electrochemical potential, exhibiting highly efficient hydrogen evolution performance and impressive durability.”

In a wider arena, the breakthrough may allow future opportunities in designing and tuning the properties of electrocatalysts at an atomic scale, for large-scale water electrolysis.

The research may also help accelerate the large-scale application of proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers and solar photoelectrochemical (PEC) water electrolysers.