Performance evaluation of non-noble and Inexpensive metal substrates for oxygen production in alkaline electrolysis

Water electrolysis is the major method for production of high purity oxygen gas. In this process, water decomposes into its elemental constituents, oxygen and hydrogen gases. In this study, various inexpensive substrates such as nickel foam, stainless steel sheet, nickel grid, brass sheet and copper sheet used as an oxygen electrode. The electrochemical techniques such as cyclic voltammetry and linear sweep voltammetry were used to evaluate the performance of electrodes. The obtained results of this study showed that nickel foam has a lower overpotential in the current density of 50 and especially 150 mA cm-2 than other samples. The overpotential of nickel foam at a current density of 50 and 150 mA cm-2 were, 442 and 580 mV respectively, which is low than two nickel mesh 60 mV and stainless steel sheet 48 mV, have less overpotential. In addition, nickel foam had a good performance in real condition and its cell efficiency at 25, 40 and 60 ° C showed 59.24, 61.83 and 67.70 percent, respectively.