Water electrolysis: from textbook knowledge to the latest scientific strategies and industrial developments
Replacing fossil fuels with energy sources and carriers that are sustainable, environmentally benign, and affordable is amongst the most pressing challenges for future socio-economic development. To that goal, hydrogen is presumed to be the most promising energy carrier. Electrocatalytic water split...
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| Published in | Chemical Society reviews Vol. 51; no. 11; pp. 4583 - 4762 |
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| Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , , , , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
England
Royal Society of Chemistry
06.06.2022
The Royal Society of Chemistry |
| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Replacing fossil fuels with energy sources and carriers that are sustainable, environmentally benign, and affordable is amongst the most pressing challenges for future socio-economic development. To that goal, hydrogen is presumed to be the most promising energy carrier. Electrocatalytic water splitting, if driven by green electricity, would provide hydrogen with minimal CO
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footprint. The viability of water electrolysis still hinges on the availability of durable earth-abundant electrocatalyst materials and the overall process efficiency. This review spans from the fundamentals of electrocatalytically initiated water splitting to the very latest scientific findings from university and institutional research, also covering specifications and special features of the current industrial processes and those processes currently being tested in large-scale applications. Recently developed strategies are described for the optimisation and discovery of active and durable materials for electrodes that ever-increasingly harness first-principles calculations and machine learning. In addition, a technoeconomic analysis of water electrolysis is included that allows an assessment of the extent to which a large-scale implementation of water splitting can help to combat climate change. This review article is intended to cross-pollinate and strengthen efforts from fundamental understanding to technical implementation and to improve the 'junctions' between the field's physical chemists, materials scientists and engineers, as well as stimulate much-needed exchange among these groups on challenges encountered in the different domains.
Replacing fossil fuels with energy sources and carriers that are sustainable, environmentally benign, and affordable is amongst the most pressing challenges for future socio-economic development. |
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| Bibliography: | https://doi.org/10.1039/d0cs01079k Renewables.ninja , EnergyStorage.ninja Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI . Helmut Schäfer received his PhD in 2001 at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. After postdoc stays at IWT Bremen, German Aerospace Centre in Cologne, and Freie Universität Berlin, he became a faculty member at the University of Osnabrück, Germany in 2017. In 2018 he set up his own working group dealing with the synthesis and characterization of novel inorganic (functional) materials for any kind of heterogeneous catalysis for the most part, however, limited to energy applications covering energy conversion and storage. pierre.millet@universite-paris-saclay.fr After receiving his PhD from Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Dr Dekel managed 50 researchers to develop high-temperature batteries in Rafael Ltd. In 2007 Dr Dekel co-founded CellEra Inc. (later POCellTech, today HydroLite), a young startup company where, as VP R&D, he led 15 researchers to pioneer and develop the Anion-Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (AEMFC) technology. In 2015 he joined the Technion. Today he is a Professor in the Wolfson Department of Chemical engineering, where he currently leads one of the largest worldwide research groups entirely devoted to developing the AEMFC technology. Prof. Dekel's group of 20 graduate students and researchers study and develop materials, components, and processes for AEMFCs, AEM Water Electrolyzers (AEMWEs), including anion-exchange membranes (AEMs), PGM and PGM-free electrocatalysts for hydrogen (and other fuels) oxidation and oxygen reduction reactions, ionomeric materials, electrodes, and cells. Prof. Dekel's publications span from fundamental studies on the main phenomena and challenges in the AEMFC and AEMWE fields through experimental and theoretical studies, all the way to applied work that sets new directions for the future of these technologies. Prof. Dekel holds more than 100 patents and papers on battery and fuel cell technologies and manages ca. $4M company and government research grants from Israel, Europe, and the USA. P. Millet is an electrochemical engineer and university professor of material science and physical-chemistry. He graduated in 1986 from the French "Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Electrochimie et d'Electrométallurgie de Grenoble" (ENSEEG) at the "Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble" (INPG). He completed his PhD thesis on water electrolysis in 1989, at the French "Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Grenoble" (CEA-CENG). He worked at Electricité de France and then spent most of his career as Professor of physical-chemistry at the French Paris-Saclay University where he was heading the "Laboratory of Research and Innovation in Electrochemistry for Energy applications", at the "Institute of Molecular Chemistry and Material Science". He is currently seconded to the industry and works as innovation director at Elogen, the French manufacturer of PEM water electrolysers. His research activities focus on the development of innovative materials, nanostructures and electrochemical reactors, mainly for water electrolysis, water photo-dissociation, carbon dioxide electro- and photo-reduction. He is also active in the field of hydrogen storage using hydride-forming materials, hydrogen compression and hydrogen permeation across metallic membranes. Email and Marian Chatenet graduated as an engineer in materials-sciences and a master in electrochemistry in 1997 from Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP). He defended his PhD in Electrochemistry in 2000 (Grenoble INP) and moved to the University of Minnesota as a post-doc. Appointed associate professor in electrochemistry (2002), he is professor in Grenoble INP since 2011. He studies electrocatalysis of complex reactions and activity/durability of electrocatalysts for low-temperature fuel cell/electrolyzer applications. Best young scientist in Electrochemistry of the French Chemical Society (SCF, 2009), he received the Oronzio and Niccolò De Nora Foundation Prize of the International Society of Electrochemistry on Applied Electrochemistry (ISE, 2010). He presently co-chairs the "Mobility Applications" axis of the Hydrogen Federation of CNRS (FRH2, CNRS 2044) and is Editor for the Journal of Power Sources. So far, he published 180+ papers in peer-reviewed journals, took 9 patents and gave 250+ (inter)national conferences. Iain Staffell is an Associate Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College London. He studied at the University of Birmingham, obtaining degrees in Physics (2004, 2005) and a PhD in Chemical Engineering (2009) under the supervision of Professor Kevin Kendall FRS and Professor Richard Green. After postdoctoral research at the Birmingham Centre for Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Research and at Imperial College Business School, Iain joined the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London in 2015. He is a co-founder of pierre.millet@elogenh2.com |
| ISSN: | 0306-0012 1460-4744 |
| DOI: | 10.1039/d0cs01079k |