AEM Electrolyte

AEM Electrolytes play an important role in improving the electrolysis efficiency of AEM. Commonly used electrolytes in AEMWE are KOH, K2CO3 and pure water. Different from the high-concentration alkaline electrolyte used in traditional ALK, since the anion exchange membrane can conduct OH−, AEM can use low-concentration alkaline solution, which can avoid safety problems caused by highly corrosive electrolytes during the experiment, not only reducing the cost of electrolysis, but also improving the flexibility of the system.

However, lower concentrations of alkaline solution will undoubtedly affect ion transport and reduce electrolysis performance. Generally, electrolysis performance increases with electrolyte concentration, but this improvement also has a certain limit. Studies have found that when the electrolyte solution is changed from 0.1 mol/L KOH to 0.3 mol/L KOH, the battery performance is improved, but when the electrolyte solution is further changed from 0.3 mol/L KOH to 1.0 mol/L KOH, the performance improvement is not obvious.

This is mainly because a slight increase in electrolyte concentration helps accelerate OER and HER kinetics, reduce the ohmic resistance of the membrane, and speed up ion mobility. However, further increasing the electrolyte concentration will increase the solution viscosity and block the catalytic active sites due to the formation of bubbles on the surface. The commonly used weak alkaline solutions are KOH and K2CO3. Generally speaking, carbonates have lower kinetics than hydroxides, but there is still controversy about the choice of the two.

Pure water-supplied AEMWE has no corrosive liquid electrolyte, which can undoubtedly reduce the development and operation costs of the electrolyzer, but only polymer materials provide hydroxide conduction pathways, which will lead to higher operating voltages. Despite this, pure water AEMWE is still the most promising key technology. LIU et al. found that additional hydroxide plays a key role not only in the ohmic resistance of the membrane and catalyst layer, but also in the reaction kinetics. The added liquid electrolyte forms an additional electrochemical interface with the electrocatalyst, providing more ion transport paths, and the total effective electrochemical active surface area in the battery using 1 mol/L KOH is 5 times that in pure water. In summary, the premise of using pure water electrolyte is the breakthrough of anion exchange membrane and ionomer performance.

In order to achieve large-scale hydrogen production and avoid expensive water pretreatment, electrolyzer technology must adapt to water directly available in nature. Seawater covers nearly 70% of the earth’s surface and is the most abundant water-containing raw material on the earth (accounting for about 97% of the total water). In areas where fresh water is scarce, the direct use of seawater is conducive to avoiding water treatment costs. In principle, seawater can achieve more efficient water electrolysis, because the resistance of pure water is 18 MΩ·cm, while the resistance of seawater is six orders of magnitude lower (20 Ω·cm). However, Cl− and microorganisms in seawater can corrode metals, especially Cl−, which can cause chlorine evolution reaction, seriously hindering the occurrence of oxygen evolution reaction, posing a severe challenge to OER electrodes. In addition, Ca2+ and Mg2+ present in seawater will also be deposited on the electrode surface and pores during electrolysis, blocking catalytic active sites and seriously affecting catalytic activity. Developing seawater electrolyzers with high electrolytic activity and durability is a difficult task.

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