Crossing the Valley of Death: From Fundamental to Applied Research in Electrolysis

Abstract

The growing societal and political focus on the use of environmentally friendly technologies has led to an ever-increasing interest in electrolysis technologies in the scientific communities. This development is reflected by the plethora of candidate catalysts for the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions, as well as the CO 2 reduction reaction, reported in the literature. However, almost none of them entered the stage of application yet. Likewise, the reports on process engineering inadequately address the utilization of these catalysts, as well as electrode and cell concepts, that might be suitable for the market. Evidently, a closer collaboration between chemists and engineers from industry and academia is desirable to speed up the development of these disruptive technologies. Herein, we elucidate the critical parameters and highlight the necessary aspects to accelerate the development of industrially relevant catalysts capable of fulfilling the forthcoming challenges related to energy conversion and storage. The aim of this Perspective, composed by industrial and academic partners, is to critically question current undertakings and to encourage researchers to strike interdisciplinary research pathways.

Electrochemical CO2 reduction toward multicarbon alcohols - The microscopic world of catalysts & process conditions

“…Regarding the synthesis and study of electrocatalysts versus industrial applicability, our group has recently published a perspective article ( Siegmund et al., 2021 ). There we defined the following evaluation criteria: (1) The issue of complexity and price required to synthesize the catalyst: Synthesis routes such as multiple steps synthesis are considered problematic in this regard, as they are accompanied by great complexity, as well as costly purification steps.…”

“…Those limitations demand the use of alternative setups for testing and optimizing of catalysts under realistic conditions at higher current densities ( Weekes et al., 2018 ; Burdyny and Smith, 2019 ). This means that catalyst testing should be carried out under reasonable conditions like current densities of at least 200 mA cm −2 and stability tests of the catalysts and electrodes used of at least 24 h ( Burdyny and Smith, 2019 ; Martić et al., 2019 ; Siegmund et al., 2021 ).…”

Developing the Chemistry of Colloidal Cu Nanocrystals to Advance the CO₂ Electrochemical Reduction

“…An open debate in the community exists regarding the possibility of translating fundamental studies to commercially relevant conditions. [26] To address this question, the Cu NC catalysts were tested in a gas-fed flow cell, which allows to implement commercially Cu(0) nuclei occurs during this heating ramp for the synthesis including the Cu-TOP complex, which is indicated by the deviation from equilibrium of the Cu(0) signal in the XANES spectra (Fig. 2C).…”

[NiFe]-(Oxy)Sulfides Derived from NiFe2O4 for the Alkaline Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

“…The electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is a promising approach to foster hydrogen usage for replacing fossil fuels as major energy carriers [1,2]. Currently, electrocatalysts based on noble metals such as Pt are primarily used as cathode material in electrolyzers due to their outstanding performance; however, the scarcity of common noble metals impedes widespread application [3][4][5].…”