The ever-increasing consumption of fossil fuels and resultant environmental issues, such as global warming, ozone layer depletion and acid rains, necessitate searching for clean energy sources. [1] Hydrogen is considered to be a promising alternative to fossil fuels by virtue of its high energy density and environmental-friendliness. [2] Renewable energy (such as electricity produced from photovoltaics and wind farms) powered water splitting provides an attractive method for sustainable production of hydrogen. [3] However, the two half electrochemical reactions involved in a water splitting process, namely, the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), are kinetically sluggish, leading to significant electrode overpotentials, and thus requires efficient electrocatalysts to improve energy efficiency. [3] Currently, precious-metal based electrocatalysts, such as Ir/Ru for OER and Pt for HER, could realize low overpotentials for water splitting. Unfortunately, the scarcity and high cost of these precious metals greatly prohibit their widespread applications.To this end, efforts have been devoted to searching for low-cost alternatives [4][5][6][7][8] and numerous Received: ((will be filled in by the editorial staff))Revised: ((will be filled in by the editorial staff))

The preparation and physical characterization of a poly(vinylidene fluoride)-graft-poly(styrene sulfonic acid) (PVDF-g-PSSA) membrane prepared by a solution-grafting method were described. These membranes exhibited high conductivity with a value 3.22 x 10(-2) S/cm at 30 degrees C. ICP studies revealed that the PVDF-g-PSSA membrane showed dramatically lower vanadium ion permeability compared to Nafion 117. Trivalent vanadium ions had the highest permeability through all these membranes in contrast to pentavalent vanadium ions with the lowest. The VRB with the low-cost PVDF-g-PSSA membrane exhibited a higher performance than that with Nafion 117 under the same operating conditions, and its energy efficiency reached 75.8% at 30 mA/cm(2). The performance of VRB with the PVDF-g-PSSA membrane can be maintained after more than 200 cycles at a current density of 60 mA/cm(2).

Developing high-performance electrocatalysts for the selective conversion of glycerol into value-added chemicals is of great significance. Herein, three-dimensional nanoporous PtAg skeletons were studied as catalysts for the electro-oxidation of glycerol. The structural features of the PtAg skeletons were revealed by electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and UV–vis spectroscopy. The electrochemical activity of the catalysts was examined by cyclic voltammetry, linear sweeping voltammetry, and chronoamperometry. The resulting PtAg skeletons exhibit a peak current density of 7.57 mA cm–2, which is 15.4-fold higher than that of Pt/C, making the PtAg skeletons one of the best electrocatalysts for glycerol oxidation. High-performance liquid chromatography results show that the PtAg skeletons yield a remarkable dihydroxyacetone selectivity of 82.6%, which has so far been the second largest value reported in the literature. The superior activity and selectivity of the PtAg skeletons are ascribed to the large surface area and abundant Pt(111) facets. Additionally, the effects of glycerol and KOH concentrations and reaction time on product selectivity were investigated.

A series of platinum–palladium–silver nanoparticles with tunable structures were synthesized for glycerol electro-oxidation in both alkaline and acidic solutions.