Electrolytic water splitting to generate hydrogen and oxygen is one of the most promising ways in which to harness intermittent renewable power sources and store the energy these provide as a clean‐burning and sustainable fuel. In recent years, this has led to an explosion in reports on electrochemical water splitting, most of them focused on improving the efficiency of the electrochemical reactions themselves. However, efficient generation of hydrogen and oxygen is of little use if these products cannot be kept separate and the community is now coming to realize that there are considerable challenges associated with maintaining adequate separation between H₂ and O₂ during electrolysis driven by intermittent renewable sources. Decoupled electrolysis (whereby oxygen production occurs with reduction of a suitable mediator and hydrogen production is then paired with the reoxidation of this mediator) offers a solution to many of these challenges by allowing O₂ and H₂ to be produced at different times, at different rates, and even in completely different electrochemical cells. In this review, an overview of recent progress in the field of decoupled electrolysis for water splitting is given and the potential that this approach has for enabling a range of other sustainable chemical processes is explored.

中文翻译：

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解耦电化学水分解：从基础到应用

电解水分解产生氢气和氧气是利用间歇性可再生能源并将其提供的能量存储为清洁燃烧和可持续燃料的最有前途的方法之一。近年来，这引起了关于电化学水分解的报道的爆炸，其中大多数集中在提高电化学反应本身的效率上。但是，如果不能将这些产品分开，则有效产生氢气和氧气的作用很小，并且社区现在开始意识到，维持H ₂和O ₂之间的充分分离存在很大的挑战。在间歇性可再生资源驱动的电解过程中。解耦电解（从而通过减少合适的介体而产生氧气，然后将氢的产生与该介体的再氧化配对）通过允许在不同的时间，不同的时间产生O ₂和H ₂提供了解决这些挑战的方法。甚至在完全不同的电化学电池中也是如此。在这篇综述中，概述了用于水分解的解耦电解领域的最新进展，并探讨了这种方法对实现一系列其他可持续化学过程的潜力。