Alcohol-Assisted Seawater Electrolysis: A Path Towards Green Hydrogen Production

The seawater electrolysis offers a prmising way for producing green and sustainable hydrogen fuel. Despite significant research progress of the past few decades, the large-scale production of hydrogen using this process is still a challenge due to the high energy demand and slow kinetics of anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The seawater electrolysis coupled with the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) not only replaces the conventional OER but also selectively converts methanol into formate at a lower potential than OER, thereby significantly reducing cell voltage and upgrading methanol to a valuable product. In this talk, I will present the fundamentals of both seawater electrolysis for the production of hydrogen and methanol oxidation to formate (MOTF), which includes mechanistic studies, electrolyzer configurations, and electrolyte effects. In addition, I will highlight the latest results and advancements in the electrocatalysts and their selectivity for MOTF. Finally, I will discuss the MOTF-coupled electrocatalytic seawater splitting and outline key challenges and future directions, highlighting pathways to accelerate the industrial utilization of this energy-efficient co-electrolysis approach.