A greener source of fuel
ChemSci Pick of the Week
Scientists in the UK have made great strides towards an environmentally-friendly way of generating hydrogen – a zero-emission fuel.
Hydrogen as fuel is a promising green alternative to petrol and diesel. It has already been used in fuel cell buses for many years, and is starting to be used in some cars. Not only is it a zero-emission fuel, but hydrogen is present on earth in vast quantities, making it a seemingly obvious source of renewable energy.
It sounds like the perfect solution to the global energy crisis, except for one problem: most of it is 'locked up', in the form of water, hydrocarbons, and other organic matter. Extracting it can be achieved by various techniques, but unfortunately not all of these are very environmentally friendly. In fact approximately 95% of globally produced H2 is made from fossil fuels, contributing to rising CO2 emissions. So not so green after all.
A potentially 'cleaner' way of producing H2 is by electrolysis of water. In electrolysis, electricity is run through water to separate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
Professor Erwin Reisner and Dr Nick Kornienko of the University of Cambridge are working to make this process a viable, practical means of producing renewable fuel. "The ideal outcome is to be able to generate clean H2 fuel from water at very low cost so that our society has an alternative energy source that when consumed, does not emit greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere", they said.
The team investigate catalysts that can be used to facilitate the electrolysis process. In a new paper, they investigated an amorphous cobalt phosphide bifunctional catalyst under a range of conditions, to understand its behaviour and how to enhance its activity.
They discovered that some of the highest performing materials for water electrolysis are metastable, meaning that their actual structure and composition changes under different reaction conditions. By understanding how this works, the team will be able to design better and better catalysts, in order to make hydrogen as a green source of fuel a reality.
"The research shown here not only synthesises a state-of-the-art next generation material to carry out [electrolysis] with high performance yet low cost, but also lays out a framework for how to probe such materials during their operation, and how subsequently to use the knowledge gained to enhance their performance", say Professor Reisner and Dr Kornienko.
This article is free to read in our open access, flagship journal Chemical Science: Nikolay Kornienko et al., Chem. Sci., 2018, Accepted Manuscript. DOI: 10.1039/C8SC01415A
ChemSci Pick of the Week
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