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Research Article

Improving the water electrolysis performance by manipulating the generated nano/micro-bubbles using surfactants

Houpeng Wang1,§, Zhaoxiang Xu2,§, Wei Lin1( ), Xue Yang1, Xianrui Gu1, Wei Zhu2( ), Zhongbin Zhuang2,3
SINOPEC Research Institute of Petroleum Processing, Beijing 100083, China
State Key Lab of Organic-Inorganic Composites and Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China
Beijing Key Laboratory of Energy Environmental Catalysis, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China

§ Houpeng Wang and Zhaoxiang Xu contributed equally to this work.

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Graphical Abstract

We present a surfactant-assistant strategy to facilitate the detachment of on-site generated nano/micro-bubbles from the electrodes and thus enhance the overall performance of water electrolyzers.

Abstract

The impeded mass transfer rate by on-site-generated gas bubbles at both cathode and anode dramatically reduces the energy conversion efficiency of the proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer (PEMWE). Herein, we report a surfactant-assistant method to accelerate the nano/micro-bubble detachment and the mass transfer rate by reducing the surface tension, resulting in an increase in overall efficiency. Four kinds of surfactants are studied in this work. Only potassium perfluorobutyl sulfonate (PPFBS), which has the structural similarity to Nafion, shows a significant promotion of activity and stability for both hygrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in the acidic medium at the high current density region. The HER overpotential at 0.1 A·cm−2 decreased 22%, and the current density at −0.4 V increased 31% by adding PPFBS. The promotion of overall efficiency by PPFBS on a homemade PEMWE was also proven. The reduced surface tension and electrostatic repulsion were the probable origins of the accelerated bubble detachment.

Keywords

proton exchange membrane water electrolysisbubbleoverpotentialsurfactantelectrostatic repulsion

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Nano Research
Volume 16 Issue 1,
January 2023
Pages 420-426
DOI: 10.1007/s12274-022-4657-z
Cite this article:
Wang H, Xu Z, Lin W, et al. Improving the water electrolysis performance by manipulating the generated nano/micro-bubbles using surfactants. Nano Research, 2023, 16(1): 420-426. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4657-z
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Received: 31 May 2022
Revised: 10 June 2022
Accepted: 13 June 2022
Published: 29 June 2022
© Tsinghua University Press 2022
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