Scientists Found a Low-Cost Way to Produce the World Cleanest Energy Source

Biomass/Biofuels

Date posted: 05/21/17

Karla Lant reports that physicists at the University of Houston have discovered a low-cost, efficient, and easily available catalyst that can split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The catalyst is far more efficient than other options that have previously been employed, and because it is grown from ferrous metaphosphate on a conductive nickel foam platform, it is both more durable and cheaper to produce than other methods. Cost-wise, it is much lower and performance-wise, much better, lead author and Anderson professor of physics Zhifeng Ren, M.D. told the University of Houston News. Some catalysts are outstanding but are only stable for one or two hours. That is no use. Breaking water down into its components, oxygen and hydrogen, is theoretically simple, but practically complex. The process demands two separate reactions, each with its own electrode. One reaction evolves hydrogen, and one evolves oxygen. While hydrogen is the component that is sought after in this process, it can not be attained without producing oxygen, and that is the issue. Efficient oxygen catalysts, unlike the readily available hydrogen catalysts, are hard to find, and that is where this discovery comes into play. The evolution of oxygen usually depends upon electrocatalysts that use expensive noble metals such as ruthenium, platinum, or iridium. In this work, we discovered a highly active and stable electrocatalyst based on earth-abundant elements, which even outperforms the noble metal based ones, Principal investigator Shuo Chen told the UH News. Our discovery may lead to a more economic approach for hydrogen production from water electrolysis.