Green supercapacitor assisted photocatalytic fuel cell system for sustainable hydrogen production

Abstract Photocatalysis for hydrogen production and pollution degradation is of significance for energy recovery and environment protection. However, hydrogen production can not be maintained due to intermittent illumination during a full-day. To solve this issue, in this paper, we herein developed a green supercapacitor assisted photocatalytic fuel cell system with a chemical bias, which aimed for storing photoelectrons by supercapacitors (2 mg/cm2) under light irradiation and discharging for hydrogen production under dark to enable continuous hydrogen production. The results suggested that the system can achieve a sustainable hydrogen production under illumination (32 μmol/L) and in dark (13 μmol/L), and an improved efficiency of the photoelectrocatalysis conversion with the chemical bias. In addition, the system exhibited a good degradation capacity of ethylene glycol under illumination with the generation of electricity. This paper provided an alternative approach to achieve continuous hydrogen production, electricity generation and waste degradation using the supercapacitor assisted photocatalytic fuel cell system.