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Combined anodic and cathodic hydrogen production from aldehyde oxidation and hydrogen evolution reaction

Nature Catalysis volume 5, pages 66–73 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Hydrogen production through water electrolysis is of considerable interest for converting the intermittent electricity generated by renewable energy sources into storable chemical energy, but the typical water electrolysis process requires a high working voltage (>1.23 V) and produces oxygen at the anode in addition to hydrogen at the cathode. Here we report a hydrogen production system that combines anodic and cathodic H2 production from low-potential aldehyde oxidation and the hydrogen evolution reaction, respectively, at a low voltage of ~0.1 V. Unlike conventional aldehyde electrooxidation, in which the hydrogen atom of the aldehyde group is oxidized into H2O at high potentials, the low-potential aldehyde oxidation enables the hydrogen atom to recombine into H2 gas. The assembled electrolyser requires an electricity input of only ~0.35 kWh per m3 of H2, in contrast to the ~5 kWh per m3 of H2 required for conventional water electrolysis. This study provides a promising avenue for the safe, efficient and scalable production of high-purity hydrogen.

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Fig. 1: Water electrolysis systems with various anode reactions.
Fig. 2: Anodic oxidation reaction of biomass-derived aldehydes.
Fig. 3: The bipolar hydrogen production system.
Fig. 4: Energy efficiency analysis of the bipolar hydrogen production system.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are included in the published article and its Supplementary Information. All other data are available from the authors upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (grant nos. 2021YFA1500900 (S.W.)), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants nos. 21902047 (Y.Z.), 21825201 (S.W.) and U19A2017 (S.W.)) and the Provincial Natural Science Foundation of Hunan (grants nos. 2016TP1009 (S.W.) and 2020JJ5045 (S.W.)).

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Tehua Wang, Li Tao, Xiaorong Zhu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Bio-Sensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Advanced Catalytic Engineering Research Center of the Ministry of Education, Hunan University, Changsha, China

    Tehua Wang, Li Tao, Chen Chen, Wei Chen, Shiqian Du, Yangyang Zhou, Bo Zhou, Dongdong Wang, Chao Xie, Peng Long, Wei Li, Yanyong Wang, Ru Chen, Yuqin Zou & Shuangyin Wang

  2. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

    Tehua Wang & Xian-Zhu Fu

  3. Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Centre of Biomedical Functional Materials, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of New Power Batteries, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China

    Xiaorong Zhu & Yafei Li

  4. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Xiangfeng Duan

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Contributions

S.W. and X.-Z.F. conceived the project. T.W. and L.T. carried out most of the experiments and co-wrote the manuscript. X.Z. and Y.L. performed the theoretical calculations. C.C., W.C., S.D. and Y.Z. performed partial characterization of the materials. B.Z., D.W., P.L., C.X., W.L., Y.W., R.C. and Y.Z. participated in data analysis. X.D. provided some important and constructive suggestions to this work. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yuqin Zou, Xian-Zhu Fu, Yafei Li, Xiangfeng Duan or Shuangyin Wang.

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Peer review information Nature Catalysis thanks Carlos Ponce de León, Lin Zhuang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–30, Discussion, Table 1 and Videos 1 and 2.

Supplementary Video 1

Control experiment of low-potential furfural oxidation using Ag/carbon cloth as the electrode.

Supplementary Video 2

Typical experiment for determining volumes of H2 produced from the anode and cathode of the bipolar hydrogen production system.

Supplementary Data 1

Computational data.

Supplementary Data 2

Statistical source data for Supplementary figures.

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Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 3

Statistical source data.

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Statistical source data.

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Wang, T., Tao, L., Zhu, X. et al. Combined anodic and cathodic hydrogen production from aldehyde oxidation and hydrogen evolution reaction. Nat Catal 5, 66–73 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-021-00721-y

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