High-entropy NiFeCoV disulfides for enhanced alkaline water/seawater electrolysis

Creating electrocatalysts with high activity and stability to meet the needs of highly effective seawater splitting is of great importance to achieve the goal of hydrogen production from abundant seawater source, which however is still challenging owing to sluggish oxygen evolution reaction (OER) dynamics and the existed competitive chloride evolution reaction. Herein, high-entropy (NiFeCoV)S₂ porous nanosheets are uniformly fabricated on Ni foam via a hydrothermal reaction process with a sequential sulfurization step for alkaline water/seawater electrolysis. The obtained rough and porous nanosheets provide large active surface area and exposed more active sites, which can facilitate mass transfer and are conducive to the improvement of the catalytic performance. Combined with the strong synergistic electron modulation effect of multi elements in (NiFeCoV)S₂, the as-fabricated catalyst exhibits low OER overpotentials of 220 and 299 mV at 100 mA cm^-2 in alkaline water and natural seawater, respectively. Besides, the catalyst can withstand a long-term durability test for more than 50 h without hypochlorite evolution, showing excellent corrosion resistance and OER selectivity. By employing the (NiFeCoV)S₂ as the electrocatalyst for both anode and cathode to construct an overall water/seawater splitting electrolyzer, the required cell voltages are only 1.69 and 1.77 V to reach 100 mA cm^-2 in alkaline water and natural seawater, respectively, showing a promising prospect towards the practical application for efficient water/seawater electrolysis.

An overview of biomass thermochemical conversion technologies in Malaysia

The rising pressure on both cleaner production and sustainable development have been the main driving force that pushes mankind to seek for alternative greener and sustainable feedstocks for chemical and energy production. The biomass 'waste-to-wealth' concept which convert low value biomass into value-added products which contain high economic potential, have attracted the attentions from both academicians and industry players. With a tropical climate, Malaysia has a rich agricultural sector and dense tropical rainforest, giving rise to abundance of biomass which most of them are underutilized. Hence, the biomass 'waste-to-wealth' conversion through various thermochemical conversion technologies and the prospective challenges towards commercialization in Malaysia are reviewed in this paper. In this paper, a critical review about the maturity status of the four most promising thermochemical conversion routes in Malaysia (i.e. gasification, pyrolysis, liquefaction and hydroprocessing) is given. The current development of thermochemical conversion technologies for biomass conversion in Malaysia is also reviewed and benchmarked against global progress. Besides, the core technical challenges in commercializing these green technologies are highlighted as well. Lastly, the future outlook for successful commercialization of these technologies in Malaysia is included.

Terephthalic acid induced binder-free NiCoP–carbon nanocomposite for highly efficient electrocatalysis of hydrogen evolution reaction

NiCoP–carbon nanocomposite based electrocatalyst (NiCoP–C(TPA)/NF) for highly efficient hydrogen production in the water electrolysis process was developed for the first time by a terephthalic acid induced binder-free method.

Biodiesel production process from microalgae oil by waste heat recovery and process integration

In this work, the optimization of microalgae oil (MO) based biodiesel production process is carried out by waste heat recovery and process integration. The exergy analysis of each heat exchanger presented an efficient heat coupling between hot and cold streams, thus minimizing the total exergy destruction. Simulation results showed that the unit production cost of optimized process is 0.592$/L biodiesel, and approximately 0.172$/L biodiesel can be avoided by heat integration. Although the capital cost of the optimized biodiesel production process increased 32.5% and 23.5% compared to the reference cases, the operational cost can be reduced by approximately 22.5% and 41.6%.