Development of Non-Noble Catalysts in Alkaline

Anion Exchange Membrane Electrolysis

Luke Watkins

School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials

Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU
l.e.watkins@ncl.ac.uk

Electrolysis is a promising method of producing hydrogen especially when the energy

is from renewable sources such as photovoltaic or hydro power. However the
development of the technology is hindered by the expensive nature of the catalysts that
are usually employed. Alkaline electrolysers have generated much interest due to their
high efficiencies and ability to substitute the expensive noble metal catalysts, which are
present in acid electrolysers, with cheaper and more common catalysts.

This project intends to develop cheap catalysts for both hydrogen and oxygen evolution
in alkaline electrolysers. Catalysts of interest for oxygen evolution include NiO, Co2O4
and NiCo2O3. In particular NiO has been deposited through chemical bath deposition
(CBD) on titanium electrodes for 10, 20 and 30 minutes at 25°C. Each electrode was
thermally annealed at 400°C for 1 hour. The weight of the deposited films are
summarised below.

CBD deposition time, Deposited weight of NiO, Current Density at 1.0 V,

minutes mg cm-2 mA cm-2
10 0.1 45 ±1
20 0.2 63 ±1
30 0.3 106 ±3
Table 1. Summary of NiO deposition on Titanium Electrodes

Electrochemical evaluation was carried out through cyclic voltammetry and steady
state methods in a three-electrode glass cell electrolyser with an electrolyte of 1M
NaOH at 25°C. The onset for oxygen evolution was 0.6V and the catalysts showed
stable voltammograms after 30 conditioning cycles.

Keywords: Alkaline electrolysis, hydrogen and oxygen evolution,

electrocatalysts, solid polymer electrolyte