Professor Jaeyoung Lee's research team at the School of Earth Science and Environmental Engineering has developed a high efficiency graphite anode for water electrolysis

□ Professor Jaeyoung Lee's research team at the School of Earth Science and Environmental Engineering at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST, President Seung Hyeon Moon) has succeeded in improving the efficiency of oxygen production during electrolysis of alkaline water *by using graphite anode.

* Electrolysis of alkaline water: It is economical and suitable for large-scale hydrogen production because it does not use precious metal catalysts in the electrochemical processes and only requires electric energy of 1.23V (DC power).

□ This process is expected to contribute to commercialization by lowering the cost of hydrogen production by using low-cost non-metal catalyst as the cathode material for the electrochemical process. This is especially true when it is compared with the process of producing hydrogen from methane gas by converting it into steam at high temperature and high pressure.

∘ The iridium precious metal catalyst when supported on activated carbon is used as a general anode material for water electrolysis. Recently, iridium, which is similar to platinum, has become more expensive because of high demand.

□ The team used electrospinning to uniformly position cobalt particles inside and outside of a carbon fiber and then completely removed the cobalt particles by chemical leaching.

 

** to selectively form mesopores and graphite structures suitable for high-efficiency oxygen generation.

∘ In the electrolysis of water, hydrogen is produced by the cathode and oxygen is produces by the anode. Although a large number of excellent performance catalysts have been developed for the anode material, the cathode material has problems when the overvoltage is high and the dynamics are slow, even when an iridium-based noble metal is used.

** A method for extracting metals such as copper, zinc, and uranium from ore is to separate certain components after dissolving them with solvents such as acids and alkalis.

□ Professor Jaeyoung Lee has identified graphitized anode as a catalyst capable of ensuring both oxygen generating activity and durability. Apart from simply measuring the characteristics of the catalyst, the zero-gap cell with the anion exchange membrane *** this is expected to contribute to the commercialization by improving the efficiency of the electrolysis process.

*** zero-gap cell: An electrochemical reaction cell in which an anode, an ion exchange membrane, and a cathode are integrally joined to each other and the gap of the removed interface is nearly 100%.

□ The research entitled "A graphitic edge plane rich meso-porous carbon anode for alkaline water electrolysis" was authored by Dongyoon Shin,  Myounghoon Choun,  Hyung Chul Ham,  Jae Kwang Lee,  and  Jaeyoung Lee and published on August 3, 2017, by Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. The research was supported by the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) and the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE) of the Republic of Korea and the GIST Research Institute (GRI).