Abstract
Hydrogen has the potential to play an important role in decarbonising our energy systems. Crucial to achieving this is the ability to produce clean sources of hydrogen using renewable energy sources. Currently platinum is commonly used as a hydrogen evolution catalyst, however, the scarcity and expense of platinum is driving the need to develop non-platinum-based catalysts. Here we report a protein-based hydrogen evolution catalyst based on a recombinant silk protein from honeybees and a metal macrocycle, cobalt protoporphyrin (CoPPIX). We enhanced the hydrogen evolution activity three fold compared to the unmodified silk protein by varying the coordinating ligands to the metal centre. Finally, to demonstrate the use of our biological catalyst, we built a proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolysis cell using CoPPIX-silk as the hydrogen evolution catalyst that is able to produce hydrogen with a 98% Faradaic efficiency. This represents an exciting advance towards allowing protein-based catalysts to be used in electrolysis cells.
Highlights
Hydrogen has the potential to play an important role in decarbonising our energy systems
An important advantage of water electrolysis is that the process can be powered by renewable energy, thereby allowing clean hydrogen production
We report a hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalyst based on cobalt protoporphyrin IX (CoPPIX) immobilised within a recombinant silk film (Fig. 1)
Summary
Hydrogen has the potential to play an important role in decarbonising our energy systems. To demonstrate the use of our biological catalyst, we built a proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolysis cell using CoPPIX-silk as the hydrogen evolution catalyst that is able to produce hydrogen with a 98% Faradaic efficiency. This represents an exciting advance towards allowing proteinbased catalysts to be used in electrolysis cells. An important advantage of water electrolysis is that the process can be powered by renewable energy, thereby allowing clean hydrogen production. There is a worldwide R&D effort to reduce or eliminate the use of platinum in the cells by exploring non-noble metals as catalysts[8,9]. To this end catalysts such as MoS210,11 and Ni5P412 have been investigated and are reported to have activity approaching the activity of platinum based catalysts
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