Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories - 30 April 2010
Cheap hydrogen fuel from seawater may be a step closerHydrogen would command a key role in future renewable energy technologies, experts agree, if a relatively cheap, efficient and carbon-neutral means of producing it can be developed. An important step towards this elusive goal has been taken by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley. The team has discovered an inexpensive metal catalyst that can effectively generate hydrogen gas from water.
“Our new proton reduction catalyst is based on a molybdenum-oxo metal complex that is about 70 times cheaper than platinum, today’s most widely used metal catalyst for splitting the water molecule,” said Hemamala Karunadasa, one of the co-discoverers of this complex. “In addition, our catalyst does not require organic additives, and can operate in neutral water, even if it is dirty, and can operate in sea water, the most abundant source of hydrogen on earth and a natural electrolyte. These qualities make our catalyst ideal for renewable energy and sustainable chemistry.”
PhysOrg Materials Science - 29 April 2010
Catalyst Brings Cheap Hydrogen Fuel Closer to RealityA new catalyst has been developed to generate hydrogen from water cheaply, but the research was originally intended to make molecules that behaved like magnets. Hydrogen is a clean power source currently produced from natural gas, with carbon dioxide as a bi-product. Producing hydrogen from water produces oxygen as a bi-product instead.
Conventional catalysts capable of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen are generally too expensive or too weak to work on water effectively enough to produce hydrogen for an inexpensive fuel, but new research has developed a molybdenum catalyst that is robust and cheap enough to do the job, but still requires too much energy to be immediately useful. It does open up new possibilities for scientists to follow in the search for the perfect water-splitting catalyst.
Science NOW - 28 April 2010
A Molecular Molybdenum-Oxo Catalyst for Generating Hydrogen from WaterHydrogen sure seems like the perfect alternative to fossil fuels. Just zap water with a bit of energy to split it into hydrogen and oxygen, and presto, you’ve wound up with a gas that can be used to power the planet—and that emits no CO2. Ah, were it only so simple. Conventional water-splitting catalysts that make hydrogen gas are either too expensive, too frail, or too finicky to work in water alone.
Now, however, researchers report that they’ve created a new molybdenum-based catalyst that cranks out the hydrogen, is cheap to make, works in water, and is robust. The catalyst isn’t perfect, as it requires too much energy to generate hydrogen. But its unusual character offers chemists a valuable new lead for making and improving water-splitting catalysts.
- Nature 464, 1329-1333 (29 April 2010), doi: 10.1038/nature08969 [LBL PDF]