Chapter 1 - Introduction to water splitting technologies

Abstract

The demand, development, fundamental, and equipment of the electrocatalytic water splitting have been briefly introduced. In order to construct a clean energy-driven society of the future, the development and utilization of hydrogen energy have attracted great attention. Then the main sources of hydrogen production are introduced, which contains natural gas reforming, biomass gasification, supercritical water gasification, and water splitting. Among them, the water splitting has the ideal properties for the production and use of hydrogen energy, because the required raw material is water, which is the same as the hydrogen combustion products. However, due to the high cost at present, the water-splitting technology in the field of hydrogen production has not been exploited fully yet. To promote the further development of water-splitting technology, the fundamentals of catalysis and water splitting reactions are presented, which further leads the way to the design and research of high-efficiency catalyst.