ORALS

SESSION: EnergyWedAM-R9	5th Intl. Symp. on Sustainable Energy Production: Fossil; Renewables; Nuclear; Waste handling , processing, and storage for all energy production technologies; Energy conservation
Wed Nov, 7 2018 / Room: Asian (60/3rd)
Session Chairs: Puzhen Gao; Tshimangadzo Saddam Munonde; Session Monitor: TBA

11:20: [EnergyWedAM01]
Nanostructured NiFe₂O₄ Composites as Electrocatalysts for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (HER) in Acidic Solutions
Tshimangadzo Saddam Munonde¹ ; Philiswa Nomngongo² ; Haitao Zheng¹ ; Mphoma Matseke¹ ; ¹The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Pretoria, South Africa; ²University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa;
Paper Id: 210 [Abstract]

Water electrolysis has recently progressed as the most efficient and attractive way of producing hydrogen [1]. However, to ensure the effective production of hydrogen yielding high current densities at a low overpotential, a catalyst is needed. Present advancements in the water electrolysis process have opened pathways leading to the synthesis of a variety of non-precious materials as electrocatalysts, in place of Pt based catalyst [2,3]. In this work, we present the hydrothermal synthesis of the non-precious nickel ferrite (NiFe₂O₄) nanocomposites for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). To increase the conductivity and therefore enhancing the activity of NiFe₂O₄ catalyst, the various carbon materials (carbon black, carbon nanofibers, etc.) were composited with NiFe₂O₄ nanoparticles. Post-treatment for NiFe₂O₄ composites were applied to further boost the catalytic activity of the NiFe₂O₄ composites. The composites show comparable activity and durability with commercial Pt/C for HER. The synthesized NiFe₂O₄ material was characterized using the XRD, FTIR, SEM and TEM, EDX and XPS etc. techniques.

References:
[1] Shi, Y., Zhang, B. (2016).. Chem. Soc. Rev, 45(6), 1529-1541.
[2] Lv, H., Xi, Z., Chen, Z., Guo, S., Yu, Y., Zhu, W., Mu, S. (2015). J. Am. Chem.Soc, 137(18), 5859-5862.
[3] Xu, X., Sun, Y., Qiao, W., Zhang, X., Chen, X., Song, X., Du, Y. (2017). Appl. Surf. Sci., 396, 1520-1527.