Hydroenergy Inspiring Large-Scale Piezoelectric Catalysis for Seawater Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

The piezoelectric effect presents a promising avenue for harvesting and utilizing low-grade mechanical energy. However, challenges from lacking matched industrial equipment and maintaining catalytic performance during scaling up impede the engineering of piezo-catalysis. Here, utilizing mechanical energy of water to inspire piezoelectricity, a successful attempt at large-scale piezo-catalysis seawater H₂ evolution was reported for the first time, exhibiting an efficiency of 36.82% for converting mechanical energy to hydrogen energy. A scaling-up test with 20 L of seawater was conducted, yielding an H₂ production rate of 0.73 L h⁻¹, which just occupied 0.7 m². This performance (1.04 L h⁻¹ m⁻²) exceeds the large-scale photocatalytic pure water H₂ production by panel reactor array (0.18∼0.25 L h⁻¹ m⁻²) reported in 2021. Additionally, the H₂ evolution activity of the 20 L system showed no obvious decline compared with the 50 mL system before scaling-up, owing to the utilization of ternary piezo-catalysts system, which capitalized on the synergistic coupling effect of kinetics and thermodynamics. This attempt provides a prototype for pursuing large-scale piezo-catalysis and practical engineering application.