Innovations and Challenges in Water Electrolysis for Sustainable Hydrogen Production

Abstract

Hydrogen is renewable, efficient energy carrier that can contribute to solve the climate change problem when paired with sustainable electricity and water electrolysis. While PEM electrolysis is outstanding in producing high purity of hydrogen, the AWE electrolysis has been Versatile in meeting several industrial purposes. AEM technology is considered as more cost effective than the existing technologies which uses highly costly metal catalysts such as Pt, Au, Ru, etc. However, water electrolysis which is a sustainable method for hydrogen production supplies only 4% of the global hydrogen due to high costs. Unfortunately, the use of precious metals constrains the prospect of scale-up; nevertheless, automation-based naked-metal electrocatalysts can be advanced as cost-effective yet conductive and electrocatalytically active solutions. But much more work has to be done to improve their characteristics and stability. In the context of this paper, the major developments and problems in water electrolysis are discussed based on the outlook for the effective and inexpensive catalysts for hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions. To this end, it seeks to overcome these barriers in order to provide direction to future studies and facilitate the development of cost-effective water electrolyzers for sustainable hydrogen generation.