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Hydrogen Power
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Hydrogen power is an alternate form of energy with tremendous potential in our energy hungry world. Much work and development has been done to make hydrogen powered cars and homes easy, practical and affordable for people.
The problem with rolling out hydrogen-powered engines and electrical generators has a lot to do with the catalyst used in the hydrogen extraction process. That process requires an electrolyzer - a device that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The catalyst currently used is platinum and it is expensive - more expensive than gold. Platinum currently cost between $1700 and $2000 per ounce and will certainly rise if the electrolyzers remain as they are but suddenly become 'mainstream' and in demand. Becoming mainstream is increasingly unlikely if the cost remains so high.
The use of hydrogen as an alternate power source depends on finding a new cheaper catalyst that delivers the same action as platinum. Is it possible? Is it possible to find another catalyst that works well with hydrogen fuel cells to recombine hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity?
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and Monash University in Australia may have found a catalyst that works as well as platinum. Before I explain what they did, it is important for you to understand that there are two parts to the hydrogen power conversion process. There's the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen. The second part of the process is recombining the hydrogen and oxygen to create electrical power. The researchers have found a new catalyst to replace platinum for the first part of the process.
Chemist Daniel Nocera, head of M.I.T.'s Solar Revolution Project and postdoctoral fellow Matthew Kanan discovered that by simply adding a thin film of the metals cobalt and phosphate on an electrode in water and running a current through it, they could split the molecules in water very efficiently and at an extremely low cost compared to platinum. Cobalt at $2.25 an ounce and phosphate at $.05 an ounce dramatically decrease the costs involved.
The process of photosynthesis was the inspiration for the successful experiment. In a future hydrogen economy,a house would function much like a leaf does, using the sun to power household electricity and to break down water into fuel—a sort of artificial photosynthesis. Very nice indeed!
John Turner, a research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., who was not involved in the research believes the discovery could reduce the need for platinum in a conventional electrolyzer and may play a role future large-scale hydrogen generator.
How nice it would be to be able to collect the energy from sunlight in huge fields and then run that electric current through water to produce vast amounts of hydrogen to meet the demand of a future fleet of hydrogen-powered vehicles.
But what about the second step in the process - the fuel cells that recombine the hydrogen and oxygen to create water to generate electricity? Chemist Bjorn Winther-Jensen of Monash University in Australia and his colleagues addressed that problem by developing new electrodes for fuel cells made from a special conducting polymer - or composite plastic, that currently costs a little less than $57 per ounce.
So did it work? Happily, during their experiments, the polymer proved to be just as effective as platinum at harvesting electricity. In fact, it was so successful that the work could be immediately put to use in mini-fuel-cells like the kind that are being designed for computers.
Problems with new processes and materials always make themselves apparent and the problem that needs to be solved currently involves trying to develop thicker electrodes with a higher electrical current output per square centimeter. This is important in fitting the process into a fuel-cell-stack which would be the structure needed in a hydrogen vehicle or power plant.
Despite the architectural difficulties, reducing or eliminating platinum is a huge step and gives much hope for a future powered by hydrogen.
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