Highly Durable Additively Manufactured Membrane-Free Electrolyzer

Whittingham, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2700-9008, Brack, Eric M ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7072-0407, Waggett, James, Crapnell, Robert D ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8701-3933, Banks, Craig E ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0756-9764 and Rowley-Neale, Samuel J ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3741-4050 (2025) Highly Durable Additively Manufactured Membrane-Free Electrolyzer. ACS Omega, 10 (22). pp. 23089-23098. ISSN 2470-1343

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Abstract

We present a membrane-free water electrolyzer device that is wholly composed of additively manufactured components. Importantly, the anode and cathode are additively manufactured using filaments of Inconel-625 (I-AME) via fused filament fabrication. The I-AMEs exhibit efficient electrocatalysis toward major reactions within water electrolyzer devices, namely, the hydrogen evolution reaction on the cathode and the oxygen evolution reaction on the anode, in both acidic and alkaline electrolytes. The I-AMEs exhibit excellent stability with no decline in their electrochemical signal output during an 80 h chronoamperometry procedure and 192 h of submersion in 0.5 M H2SO4. Key insights into the effect of electrode design and architecture within flow devices are presented with computational fluid dynamic modeling revealing optimal electrode designs to maximize electrode–electrolyte interaction. The additively manufactured electrolyzer device was shown to be capable of producing 100.8 mL/h and 36 mL/h of hydrogen and oxygen, respectively, at a low current density of ca. 5 mA cm–2. The herein described additive manufactured water electrolyzer device has the potential to produce significant quantities of hydrogen and oxygen gas in remote scenarios without the requirement of complex and costly technologies.