Dhofarene: Frankincense-Derived graphene oxide-like nanostructures for hydrogen evolution in acidified distilled water, seawater and wastewater

Sustainable hydrogen production relies on clean energy inputs and efficient, earth-abundant, and scalable catalysts to minimize environmental impact. Herein, we introduce Dhofarene, a metal-free graphene oxide (GO) like catalyst, derived from Omani frankincense Boswellia sacra for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in 0.5 M H₂SO₄ electrolyte prepared by using diverse water matrices such as distilled water (Dw), seawater (Sw) and wastewater (Ww). The biomass derived GO like nanostructure was given a name “Dhofarene” which recognizes “Dhofar” region's rich history of frankincense and “ene” which signifies presence of sp² carbon skeleton. The Dhofarene was comprehensively characterized by FTIR, XRD, RAMAN, XPS, SEM, EDX, TEM and SAED techniques. Upon drop-cast on glassy carbon electrode (GCE), Dhofarene has shown promising results in HER in acidic media with an overpotential of 123 mV for Dw, 160 mV in Sw and 196 mV in Ww. The Tafel slopes obtained are also encouraging with 42.6 mV dec⁻¹ for Dw, 53.7 mV dec⁻¹ for Sw and 59.3 mV dec⁻¹ for Ww which agrees with a Volmer-Heyrovsky mechanism. An enhanced electrochemically active surface area of 41.8 μF cm⁻² of Dhofarene modified GCE (Dhofarene/GCE) compared to bare GCE of 11.2 μF cm⁻² emphasizes its sustained operational stability and resistance to interfacial degradation. Dhofarene exhibits stable HER performance for over 20 h in Dw and Sw without significant potential drift which might be attributed to its intrinsically robust active sites. These results exhibit that the locally rich biomass derived Dhofarene can be transformed into high-performance electrocatalysts that are metal free and can function under realistic conditions and offer a sustainable approach for large-scale hydrogen production.