On October 19th, a research team at Pusan National University (PNU) created an electrolysis device that can produce oxygen and hydrogen in water at the same time. The development was conducted by Professor Kandasamy Prabakar of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Professor Oi Lun Li, of the Department of Material Engineering, researcher, Deviprasath Chinnadurai, of the Department of Electrical Engineering, and Rajmohan Rajendiran of Material Engineering. That led the Hyowon herald to dig into their journey in depth by interviewing Kandasamy Prabakar.

Q1. Can you guide us through what an electrolysis device is?

   In general, electrolysis is a device used to drive a chemical reaction using electrical energy. The word “lysis” means to separate or decompose. This research was on water electrolysis, which means that the electrolysis device breaks down or splits water into H2 and O2 in gaseous form. The process is carried out in an electrolytic cell apparatus consisting of positive and negative electrodes that are held apart and dipped into a solution containing positively and negatively charged ions.

Q2. What are you expecting from developing electrolysis devices?

   To meet Carbon neutrality by 2050, we need to develop a technology that could reduce greenhouse emissions. The development of electrolysis for hydrogen production is called "green hydrogen" since it is carbon dioxide (CO2) free technology, especially with a hybrid system where renewable energy drives water electrolysis. Moreover, water electrolysis is the best way of producing high purity H2. So, onboard generation of hydrogen would be one of the future technologies to directly feed the H2 into Fuel cells to reduce the greenhouse gas emission drastically.

Q3. If you have any future research direction and goals you want to achieve, can you unveil them?

   In South Korea, the government has planned to provide hydrogen gas as cheap as
3,000 per kilogram in 2040, while the current production cost from electrolysis is over
10,000 per kilogram. Thus, the most critical issue in "Green hydrogen" production via water electrolysis will be optimizing the device with minimal cost. Therefore, our goal is to develop low-cost but highly efcient materials for electrolysis devices, mainly focusing on electrode materials. In a future perspective, the constructed device should be practically tested for various water splitting scenarios like seawater, acidic and neutral medium electrolysis. The third goal is to re-energize the used electric car batteries. The latest cheap electric car batteries are made from metal phosphates where our methodology would help re-energize them.