Pulsed current water splitting electrochemical cycle for hydrogen production

Abstract A pulsed current 3 D MnO 2 electrode water splitting electrochemical cycle is being proposed for hydrogen production. In 3D MnO 2 electrochemical cycle, the reactions take place at the solid/liquid and solid/gas two phase boundaries. Also, this electrochemical cycle should be able to generate hydrogen and oxygen gas separately at different periods of time. Here, we applied an interrupted pulsed current to reduce the overpotential caused by diffusion layers in conventional direct current electrolysis. The pulsed current, which disturbs the formation of the ion diffusion layer in the vicinity of the electrodes, is observed to be effective above 50 Hz. The best electrolysis performance was recorded at a current density of 0.2 A cm −2 , and the observed cell voltage was 1.69 V at 25 °C for a pulse frequency of 500 Hz, which is less than the corresponding conventional alkaline electrolysis.