Sometimes, searching for a cost efficient bifunctional catalytic material for water splitting can be accomplished from a very unlikely place. In this work, we are reporting such a discovery of utilizing the stainless steel (SS) scrubber directly as a catalytic electrode for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) of water electrolysis in 1 M KOH. The iR corrected overpotential calculated at an areal current density of 10 mA cm^–2 for a SS scrubber in HER is 315 mV which is 273 mV higher than Pt/C. Similarly, the SS scrubber required 418 mV at 10 mA cm^–2 which is just 37 and 98 mV higher than Ni(OH)₂ and RuO₂. Interestingly, the kinetic analysis revealed that the SS scrubber had facile kinetics for both HER and OER in 1 M KOH as reflected by their corresponding Tafel slope values viz., 121 and 63 mV dec^–1, respectively. In addition, the two electrode cell fabricated using the same SS scrubber electrode delivered 10 mA cm^–2 at 1.98 V. Beyond everything, the SS scrubber had shown ultrahigh stability in both half-cell and full-cell studies for total water splitting. Further, as far as the cost of an electrode material per gram is concerned, the SS scrubber defeats all the best electrocatalysts of water splitting by having a price of just $0.012 USD which is $2.228 USD lower than pure Ni, $59.658 USD lower than RuO₂ and $158.028 USD lower than Pt/C 20 wt % catalyst. The overall study specified that the SS scrubber can be adapted for cost-efficient large scale water electrolysis for bulk hydrogen production.

中文翻译：

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不锈钢洗涤塔：碱性介质中完全水分解的高性价比催化电极

有时，寻找成本低廉的双功能催化材料进行水分解可以在非常不可能的地方完成。在这项工作中，我们报告了这样一种发现：将不锈钢（SS）洗涤塔直接用作1 M KOH中水电解的氧释放反应（OER）和氢释放反应（HER）的催化电极。对于HER中的SS洗涤塔，在10 mA cm ^–2的面电流密度下计算出的iR校正过电势为315 mV，比Pt / C高273 mV。同样，SS洗涤塔在10 mA cm ^–2时需要418 mV，仅比Ni（OH）₂和RuO ₂高37和98 mV。。有趣的是，动力学分析表明，SS洗涤塔在1 M KOH中对HER和OER均具有简便的动力学，这分别通过其相应的Tafel斜率值分别为121和63 mV dec ^–1反映出来。此外，使用相同的SS洗涤器电极制造的两个电极电池在1.98 V电压下可提供10 mA cm ^–2的电流。除此以外，SS洗涤器在半电池和全电池研究中均显示出超高的稳定性，可用于总水分解。此外，就每克电极材料的成本而言，SS洗涤塔的价格仅为0.012美元，比纯镍低2.228美元，比RuO ₂低59.658美元，从而击败了所有最好的水分解电催化剂。并且比Pt / C 20 wt％催化剂低158.028美元。总体研究表明，SS洗涤塔可适用于经济高效的大规模电解水，以生产大量氢气。