High performance of electrochemically modified-polypropylene electrodes for alkaline water splitting

Abstract

Green hydrogen production by electrolysis is currently a promising alternative to reduce the environmental impact of energy production and storage. The electrode substrate plays an important role in the catalytic performance of water splitting for efficient and low-cost hydrogen production. In this work a novel substrate was developed using nickel electroless plating over a non-woven polypropylene (PP) sheet, without the use of toxic pretreatments and costly activators, thereby reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency and safety of the process. This novel substrate exhibits larger capacitance than nickel foam (NF) and, with the application of a catalytic coating of NiFeP, the overpotentials for the electrolysis reactions were lower than NF at 30 mA cm−2, being 0.263 and 0.273 V for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and 0.150 and 0.199 V for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) for NiFeP/NiP/PP and NiFeP/NF electrodes, respectively. The results show the great potential of non-woven polypropylene electrodes for water splitting, as well as other possible applications.