The usage of discarded battery coals as electrodes and improving their hydrogen gas production performances by impregnation with Zr and Ce metals

Abstract

Hydrogen gas (H_2(g)) production is one of the major topic of the industry and energy production fields, for the last decades. Especially it is popular with showing high energy density. Among the other industrial methods electrolysis is the cleanest one without any by product emissions. It has been very popular to recovery of the discarded materials (such as batteries) as an environmentally friendly equipments. Here the coal of a used up battery is utilized as an electrode in the electrolysis system in order to produce (H_2(g)). Then these electrodes were modified with impregnation of Zr and Ce metals. At first, HNO_3(aq) and H₂SO_4(aq) solutions were compared as electrolytes with plain electrodes and H₂SO_4(aq) is defined as the optimum electrolyte medium (maximum H_2(g) production densities as 24.10xE^-5 mL sec^-1 and 87.22xE^-5 mL sec^-1,charge densities as 1137.40xE^-4 C sec^-1 and 2976.19xE^-4 C sec^-1 and current densities as 45.68xE^-7 i sec^-1 and 165.34xE^-7 i sec^-1 for 0.10 M HNO_3(aq) and H₂SO_4(aq) solutions respectively). Then all of these modified electrodes were utilized to the electrolysis system and compared in the case of H_2(g) production yield, charge and current density values. The best performances were obtained from Ce modified electrode (maximum H_{2 (g)} production density as 125.00xE^-5 mL sec ^-1, charge density as 4265.24xE^-4 C sec^-1 and current density as 236.96xE^-7 i sec^-1  in 0.10 M of H₂SO_4(aq) electrolyte). Hydrogen is one of the most promising, clean and sustainable energy carrier, that can be produced effectively by the usage of Ce modified battery coal.

Keywords

• energy,battery,hydrogen,electrolysis,cerium

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