Dear Colleagues,
Greetings! This week’s digest features seven interesting papers, all in the area of low temperature fuel cells and electrolyzers. Before highlighting three articles, I would like to thank all reviewers for their service to The Electrochemical Society, which made these publications possible.
“All-Iron” Alkaline Water Electrolyzer. This paper reports an inexpensive and scalable approach to utilize steel-based electrodes that are coated with a thin layer of Ni-Mo for alkaline water electrolysis. The electrochemical performance of this “all-iron” alkaline electrolyzer is comparable to industrial electrolyzer systems. The durability test for 100 hours at 1 A/cm2 shows no noticeable degradation, indicating the robustness of these electrodes. (Contact author: S. R. Narayanan at srnaraya@usc.edu).
Dependence of Transport Phenomenon on Wettability and Microstructure. This paper presents the effect of substrate microstructure, hydrophobic coating load, and hydrophilic pattern width on the fluid diffusion in hydrogen production by electrolysis. The authors developed pore network models with patterned wettability by using topology and size information extracted from high resolution tomographic images of three common gas diffusion layer materials. (Contact author: A. Forner-Cuenca at a.forner.cuenca@tue.nl).
Electroconversion of CO2 with at a High Efficiency. The article is built on Wu et al.’s early papers, published in JES in 2012 and 2013. In this work, boron dopant is used to tune the chemical activity of Sn, leading to enhanced electroconversion from CO2 to formic acid/formate in both flow cells and solid-state electrolyzers. Boron-doped Sn catalyst exhibits a high faradaic efficiency and energy efficiency in the solid-state electrolyzer employing a hydroxide ion conductor. (Contact author Jingjie Wu at jingjie.wu@uc.edu).
With best regards,
Xiao-Dong Zhou
Fuel Cells, Electrolyzers, and Energy Conversion Technical Editor
Journal of The Electrochemical Society
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Journal of The Electrochemical Society
Pore Network Modelling of Capillary Transport and Relative Diffusivity in Gas Diffusion Layers with Patterned Wettability
T. G. Tranter, P. Boillat, A. Mularczyk, V. Manzi-Orezzoli, P. R. Shearing, D. J. L. Brett, J. Eller, J. T. Gostick, and A. Forner-Cuenca
Design and Validation of a Fluidized Bed Catalyst Reduction Reactor for the Synthesis of Well-Dispersed Nanoparticle Ensembles
Elisabeth Hornberger, Henrike Schmies, Benjamin Paul, Stefanie Kühl, and Peter Strasser
Modeling Overpotentials Related to Mass Transport Through Porous Transport Layers of PEM Water Electrolysis Cells
Gergely Schmidt, Michel Suermann, Boris Bensmann, Richard Hanke-Rauschenbach, and Insa Neuweiler
Boron Doping in Tin Catalysts Towards Gas-Phase CO2 to Formic Acid/Formate Electroreduction with High Production Efficiency and Rate
Zhengyuan Li, Tianyu Zhang, Ram Manohar Yadav, Jianfang Zhang, and Jingjie Wu
Mo Doped Amorphous CoSx Porous Leaf-Like Nanostructure on Ti Mesh as Electrocatalyst for Alkaline Hydrogen Production
Jiankang Wang, Yajing Wang, Zhongping Yao, Taiping Xie, Songli Liu, and Zhaohua Jiang
Development and Characterization of a Micro Redox Fuel Cell
Yinghui Zhang, David P. Wilkinson, and Fariborz Taghipour
Inexpensive and Efficient Alkaline Water Electrolyzer with Robust Steel-Based Electrodes
Billal Zayat, Debanjan Mitra, and S. R. Narayanan