A demonstration of carbon-assisted water electrolysis

Abstract

It is shown that carbon fuel cell technology can be combined with that of high temperature steam electrolysis by the incorporation of carbon fuel at the cell anode, with the resulting reduction of the required electrolysis voltage by around 1V. The behaviour of the cell current density and applied voltage are shown to be connected with the threshold of electrolysis and the main features are compared with theoretical results from the literature. The advantage arises from the avoidance of efficiency losses associated with electricity generation using thermal cycles, as well as the natural separation of the carbon dioxide product stream for subsequent processing. © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.