Hydrogen Fuel Tech Gets Boost from Low-Cost, Efficient Catalyst

ScienceDaily (May 3, 2011) — Scientists have engineered a cheap, abundant alternative to the expensive platinum catalyst and coupled it with a light-absorbing electrode to make hydrogen fuel from sunlight and water.

The discovery is an important development in the worldwide effort to mimic the way plants make fuel from sunlight, a key step in creating a green energy economy. It was reported in Nature Materials by theorist Jens Nørskov of the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University and a team of colleagues led by Ib Chorkendorff and Søren Dahl at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).

Hydrogen is an energy dense and clean fuel, which upon combustion releases only water. Today, most hydrogen is produced from natural gas which results in large CO2-emissions. An alternative, clean method is to make hydrogen fuel from sunlight and water. The process is called photo-electrochemical, or PEC, water splitting. When sun hits the PEC cell, the solar energy is absorbed and used for splitting water molecules into its components, hydrogen and oxygen.


A team of researchers have engineered a cheap, abundant alternative to the expensive catalyst platinum and coupled it with a light-absorbing electrode to make hydrogen fuel from sunlight and water. The discovery was published in Nature Materials by theorist Jens Nørskov of the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University and a team of colleagues led by Ib Chorkendorff and Søren Dahl at the Technical University of Denmark. The team optimized a photo-electrochemical water splitting device by designing light absorbers made of silicon arranged in closely packed pillars, imaged above using a scanning electron microscope. After dotting the pillars with tiny clusters of the new catalyst and exposing the pillars to light, researchers watched as hydrogen gas bubbled up -- as quickly as if they'd used costly platinum. (Credit: Image courtesy of Christian D. Damsgaard, Thomas Pedersen and Ole Hansen, Technical University of Denmark)

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110502110631.htm

if we just made it a priority.

Though not in ten years.

There's no point in using the sun to create a fuel and then using the fuel to create electricity (to replace coal). That can't be more efficient than just creating electricity directly...

...but anything that creates a usable fuel at a competitive price could be a game-changer.

give up coal and oil in 10 years. Solar etc., are moving along that fast. I know that's "out there" but from what I've seen, I believe we could do it if push came to shove.

"The hydrogen gas-generating device is only half of a full photo-electrochemical cell. The other half of the PEC would generate oxygen gas from the water; though hydrogen gas is the goal, without the simultaneous generation of oxygen, the whole PEC cell shuts down."

Why? because you cannot get hydrogen from water without getting oxygen also. Maybe it just needs to be worded better? H₂O and all that.