Low Cost Electrodes for Alkaline Water Electrolysis
Authors: Zamanizadeh Hamid , Pollet Bruno Georges , Oyarce Alejandro , Sunde Svein , Seland Frode 
Published: July 2022

To succeed with the green transition, one must have cheap and reliable ways to store intermittent renewable energy. It is believed that hydrogen will play a key role in this regard, preferably through electrochemical water splitting. Alkaline water electrolysis is a mature technology, using nickel materials in most key components. Although Ni and Ni-S are active materials towards the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), respectively, it is desirably to develop more active, durable and cheaper electrodes through a simple activation procedure of low-Ni containing materials. Moureaux et al. [1, 2] and Schäfer et al. [3] have shown that cheap stainless steel electrodes can be activated through electrooxidation in high pH electrolytes creating a nickel enriched surface.
In this work we have employed a similar activation procedure, activating SS316 at 1.7 V for 18 hours at room temperature in a 3-electrode electrochemical cell using electrolytes with various KOH concentrations. The surface composition was analyzed with XPS and GD-OES before and after activation, and revealed that the Ni content in the surface increased with increasing KOH, at the expense of Fe and Cr. The composition converged to 73% Ni and 27% Fe for KOH concentration of 7.5 and higher. This composition showed the best OER performance of all surfaces prepared, including pure Ni electrodes. A similar enrichment of Ni was observed for SS304, reaching the same surface composition as SS316. However, the Ni content in the surface after activation changed less and was lower than SS316 and SS304 after activation for plate materials with higher nominal Ni bulk composition (Inconel718, Incoloy800 and NiFe 50:50 alloy). Hence, the surface composition can be tuned by selecting an electrode material and pH of the activation electrolyte.
Furthermore, we have tested the activated SS316 electrodes at relevant operating conditions in a single cell alkaline water electrolyzer test rig (30wt% KOH, 80°C and 9 bar) and compared it with Ni and as-received SS316 electrodes. The activated SS316 electrodes outperformed the other electrodes and showed a stable performance during 255 hours operation at 0.8 A cm-2. The OER electrode activation procedure was successfully attempted in-situ in the alkaline single cell water electrolyzer test rig. However, the application of high currents needed for the activation led to high cell voltages (3 V) and hence harmful conditions.
Finally, the effect of the activation procedure on the HER performance was also investigated and tied to the purity of the electrolyte. Deposition of Cu and Fe metal impurities was observed on the HER electrode, which increased with a lower grade of the KOH electrolyte. HER activity was observed to increase after activation in low grade KOH, which was attributed to an increased surface area and higher Fe to Cu ratio in the deposit.
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[2] F. Moureaux, P. Stevens, G. Toussaint, M. Chatenet, Appl. Catal. B-Environ 258 (2019) 117963.
[3] H. Schäfer, D.M. Chevrier, P. Zhang, J. Stangl, K. Müller‐Buschbaum, J.D. Hardege, K. Kuepper, J. Wollschläger, U. Krupp, S. Dühnen, Adv. Funct. Mater. 26 (2016) 6402-6417.