Room-temperature electrochemical water–gas shift reaction for high purity hydrogen production

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07937-w
• Publication Date: 2019-01-02T17:00:44Z
• Authors: Xiaoju Cui; Hai-Yan Su; Ruixue Chen; Liang Yu; Jinchao Dong; Chao Ma; Suheng Wang; Jianfeng Li; Fan Yang; Jianping Xiao; Mengtao Zhang; Ding Ma; Dehui Deng; Dong H. Zhang; Zhongqun Tian; Xinhe Bao
• Keywords: Water-gas shift reaction

Abstract Traditional water–gas shift reaction provides one primary route for industrial production of clean-energy hydrogen. However, this process operates at high temperatures and pressures, requires additional separation H 2 from products containing CO , CH 4 residual CO. Herein, we report a room-temperature electrochemical direct purity hydrogen (over 99.99%) with faradaic efficiency approximately 100%. Through rational design anode structure to facilitate diffusion PtCu catalyst optimize adsorption, the anodic onset potential is lowered almost 0 volts versus reversible electrode room temperature atmospheric pressure. The optimized achieves current density 70.0 mA cm −2 0.6 which over 12 times that commercial Pt/C (40 wt.%) catalyst, remains stable even more than 475 h. This study opens new promising producing