engleski

The Nickel Foam as the Electrodes Material for an Alkaline Electrolyser

The alkaline water electrolysis process using renewable energy sources allows hydrogen production completely with zero CO2 emission. Also, hydrogen used as a fuel for transport vehicles or energy storage, produces only water and no other harmful emissions. In that sense, alkaline electrolysers can play important role in sustainable development of the transport and power sectors. Consequently, electrolyser efficiency needs to be permanently improved. On the increasing of electrolyser system efficiency, the large impact takes material of the electrodes. In investigation of the different materials for hydrogen production, nickel (Ni) foam has shown wide interest in hydrogen scientific community. In this paper were performed experiments both on the Ni foam and Ni plate with aim to improve the system efficiency. The electrolyte in all performed experiments was 25% potassium hydroxide (KOH) solution. The measurements were done in the aim to define parameters of the electrodes such as parameter related to Ohmic resistance of electrolyte and coefficient for overvoltage on electrodes as well as effect of the electrodes active surface area on hydrogen production. An active surface area of the Ni foam was calculated via BET method. Hence, there was defined linear region of the hydrogen production. Furthermore, there was shown that an increasing of the electrodes overvoltage decreases the resistance to the charge-transfer both at the Ni foam and Ni plate but according to the active surface area calculation, hydrogen production is much higher using Ni foam electrodes in comparison to the Ni plate at the same overvoltage. The results were presented in diagrams and tables.

nickel foam; hydrogen production

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