Abstract
The electricity-driven water splitting acts as a promising pathway for renewable energy conversion and storage,yet anodic oxygen evolution reaction(OER)largely hinders its efficiency.Seeking the alternatives to OER exhibits the competitive advance to address this predicament.In this work,we show a more thermodynamically and kinetically favorable reaction,electrochemical oxidative dehydrogenation(EODH)of benzylamine to replace the conventional OER,catalyzed by a cobalt cyclotetraphosphate(Co2P4O12)nanorods catalyst grown on nickel foam.This anodic reaction lowers the electricity input of 317 mV to-ward the desired current density of 100mA/cm2,together with a highly selective benzonitrile product of more than 97％.More specifically,when coupling it with cathodic hydrogen evolution reaction(HER),the proposed HER||benzylamine-EODH configuration only requires a cell voltage of 1.47 V@100mA/cm2,exhibiting an energy-saving up to 17％relative to conventional water splitting,as well as the near unit selectivity toward cathodic H2 and anodic benzonitrile products.