Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2024 Conference (MATSUS24)
Publication date: 18th December 2023
Hydrogen gas (H2) is a renewable and clean energy that can be produced from water splitting and could be the future carbon-neutral energy resource to replace fossil fuels. However, today only 5% of H2 is produced from electrolysis and more than 90% of H2 is currently produced from fossil fuels, contributing significantly to CO2 emissions [1]. The overall H2 electrolysis is limited by insufficient full cell energy efficiencies (EEs), slow kinetic, and low electrode durability (i.e., catalyst dissolution, damage, inactivation), and hence lacks feasibility at the scale of societal demand [2]. Despite catalyst engineering and structural optimization strategies having been used to accelerate electrocatalytic performance, these strategies not only have chemofunctional and mechanistic complexity that occurred during their applications but do not address the practical issue surrounding the costs of multiscale engineering specialized catalysts. Using ultrasound as an external source to boost water electrolysis would increase the efficiency of the process and address challenges related to electrode fouling (e.g., adhesion of generated gas bubbles and mineral ions scale) and limited mass transfer on electrode surfaces and in electrolytes [3]. However, there are many outstanding questions regarding the atomic-scale meta-stability, superaerophobocity chemical kinetics mechanism, and stability during the sono-electrocatalysis process.
In this work, we demonstrate that coupling a water electrolyzer cell to an ultrasonic transducer potentially serves to tailor the electrocatalytic performance in alkaline electrolytes using Ni precatalysts. Our investigation was initiated by the evaluation of several descriptors-based catalyst activities. Consequently, pulse electrolysis with a time resolution of 1×104 ms at a frequency of 866 kHz (50% power, 125W) reduced the overpotential, accelerated kinetic reaction, facilitated charge/electron transfer, rapid interfacial mass transport, and enhanced durability. Subsequently, we elucidated ex-situ catalyst characterization and demonstrated intense surface reconstruction and fast electrochemical activation under UEA to form a NiOOH layer that populates the catalytic active site. Moreover, it was found that the physical and chemical effects generated during acoustic cavitation contribute to the overall production rate of H2. This work proposed a deep investigation of the consequent effect associated with the sonochemical process on the electrocatalytic performance is a significant step forward for sustainable clean energy
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