Carbon steel for hydrogen harvesting

• Main Author: Tan, Sarah Jia Wen
• Other Authors: Huang Yizhong
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Materials
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147849
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate hydrogen gas production through the corrosion of low carbon steel using electrochemistry. Electrolytes of varying pH (1 to 14) were used in this research to find the pH that produced the lowest overpotential and thus lowest consumption of electrical energy. Other electrochemical techniques, namely CV and EIS, were used to find the Cdl and thus ECSA. The experiments were conducted using a 3-electrode system. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was employed to observe the morphology before and after the corrosion of the surface of low carbon steel. SEM EDS and X-ray Diffraction (XRD) was also employed to detect the different elements present. In addition, the effect of surface roughness on HER was also investigated in this study.