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Nano Research 2023, 16(1): 420-426 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4657-z
Research Article | Issue | Published: 29 June 2022

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

Show Author's Information 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.

Keywords:
bubble, surfactant, proton exchange membrane water electrolysis, overpotential, electrostatic repulsion
Topics:
Energy
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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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

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.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

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

Show Author's information 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.

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: bubble, surfactant, proton exchange membrane water electrolysis, overpotential, electrostatic repulsion

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Publication history
Copyright
Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 31 May 2022
Revised: 10 June 2022
Accepted: 13 June 2022
Published: 29 June 2022
Issue date: January 2023

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press 2022

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21971008 and 22101016), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (buctrc201916, buctrc201823), and China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (SINOPEC, 120052-2).

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