The group of DENG Denghui proposes a technology to balance peaks of electricity use during daytime and valleys during night time using hydrogen as a green energy carrier. To this end, they have decoupled the electrolysis of water via a Nafion membrane into an O2 evolution reaction with the reduction of a polysulfide mediator at night, and a H2 evolution reaction with the oxidation of the polysulfide mediator at daytime. As the mediator lowers the anode potential for oxygen formation, energy cost is reduced in the step of H2 production. A key point to this innovation is to use an electrode made up from
N-doped graphene encapsulating a CoNi nanoalloy (CoNi@NGs). This „chainmail catalyst“ showed excellent performance in hydrogen formation over 500 hrs and the electrode resisted sulphide corrosion over 500 hrs.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100144
