Enriching H2O through boron nitride as a support to promote hydrogen evolution from non-filtered seawater

Abstract

Nonfiltered seawater electrolysis is promising for sustainable hydrogen gas. However, hydrogen production from seawater electrolysis faces many challenges, including corrosion caused by insoluble precipitates such as Cl⁻, Mg²⁺ and Ca²⁺ in alkaline seawater as well as marine pollutants can lead to blocking active sites, together with high energy consumption, resulting in low efficiency and poor stability of electrocatalyst, which hinders the application of seawater electrolysis technology. In this work, we report H₂O enrichment of the Pt/hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) electrocatalyst. Electrochemical tests and in situ experiments both demonstrate that h-BN as the support loaded Pt effectively prevents the corrosion of the cathode, the formation of fouling, and reduces energy consumption, resulting in prolonged operating stability at high current density. The electrocatalyst works stably for over 1000 h at a high current density of 500 mA cm⁻² in alkaline seawater electrolytes. Pt/h-BN shows better hydrogen evolution performance than Pt/C under industrial production conditions and has good industrial application prospects.