Solid oxide electrolysis cells (SOECs) have great application prospects because of their excellent performance, but the long-term applications of the stacks are restricted by the structural degradation under the high-temperature conditions. Therefore, an SOEC degradation model is developed and embedded in a process model of the high-temperature steam electrolysis (HTSE) system to investigate the influence of the stack degradation at the system level. The sensitivity analysis and optimization were carried out to study the influence factors of the stack degradation and system hydrogen production efficiency and search for the optimal operating conditions to improve the hydrogen production efficiency and mitigate the stack degradation. The analysis results show that the high temperature and large current density can accelerate the stack degradation but improve the hydrogen production efficiency, while the high temperature gradually becomes unfavorable in the late stage. The low air-to-fuel feed ratio is beneficial to both the degradation rate and hydrogen production efficiency. The results show that the optimization method can improve the hydrogen production efficiency and inhibit the stack degradation effectively. Moreover, part of the hydrogen production efficiency has to be sacrificed in order to obtain a lower stack degradation rate.

Nitrile (C≡N bond) activation for direct organic synthesis has been less explored so far due to a high redox potential of nitrile and its low dissociation energy of C−CN bond. Herein, we demonstrate a direct reductive coupling of nitriles and 1,2-phenylenediamines to yield various benzimidazoles in excellent yields (95%–99%) by using rhodium phosphide (Rh₂P) catalyst supported on lignin-derived carbon (LC) using H₂ (or hydrazine hydrate) as a hydrogen source. The high catalytic performance of Rh₂P/LC is attributed to enhanced charge transfer to Rh and strong P−Rh interactions. Our isotope trace experiment confirms the presence of H/D exchange between H₂ and the inert –CD₃ group of CD₃CN via an intramolecular D-shift. Reusability of Rh₂P/LC is further demonstrated by a seven-time recycling without evident loss of activity. This research thus highlights a great potential in organic transformation with nitrile as a synthetic building block.

A Cu₅tz₆ cluster-based metal–organic framework results in efficient electrochemical reduction of CO₂ to CO, in which the copper site was fully characterized by X-ray absorption spectroscopy and other techniques.