Mar
29
A Carbon Catalyst for Hydrogen Water Splitting
March 29, 2016 | Leave a Comment
Researchers at Griffith University’s Queensland Micro and Nanotechnology Centre in Australia have successfully managed to use carbon to produce hydrogen from water. Professor Xiangdong Yao and his team now have carbon as a replacement for the much more costly element platinum.
Professor Yao said, “Hydrogen production through an electrochemical process is at the heart of key renewable energy technologies including water splitting and hydrogen fuel cells. Despite tremendous efforts, exploring cheap, efficient and durable electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution still remains a great challenge.”
The Ni-MOF used as a precursor consists of an orthorhombic crystal. Atoms are shown as follows: C, black; H, white; O, red; N, blue; Ni, royal blue. Carbonization of the synthesized Ni-MOF was at 700 °C in N2 atmosphere to obtain Ni@C. HCl leaching treatment was repeated three times to sufficiently dissolve exposed Ni metal. Constant potential and CV treatments were performed to activate the catalysts until they reached the optimal performance and remained stable. During the activation process, Ni single atoms formed in situ anchored on the graphitized carbon. Click the Nature Communications link below to see the abstract, the full paper at this date and this and other figures.
The good professor explained, “Platinum is the most active and stable electrocatalyst for this purpose, however its low abundance and consequent high cost severely limits its large-scale commercial applications. We have now developed this carbon-based catalyst, which only contains a very small amount of nickel and can completely replace the platinum for efficient and cost-effective hydrogen production from water.”
The team’s research paper has been published in Nature Communications.
He detailed the work with, “In our research, we synthesize a nickel-carbon-based catalyst, from carbonization of metal-organic frameworks, to replace currently best-known platinum-based materials for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution. This nickel-carbon-based catalyst can be activated to obtain isolated nickel atoms on the graphitic carbon support when applying electrochemical potential, exhibiting highly efficient hydrogen evolution performance and impressive durability.”
Proponents of a hydrogen economy advocate hydrogen as a potential fuel for motive power including cars and boats and on-board auxiliary power, stationary power generation (e.g., for the energy needs of buildings), and as an energy storage medium (e.g., for interconversion from excess electric power generated off-peak).
Professor Yao says that this work may enable new opportunities for designing and tuning properties of electrocatalysts at atomic scale for large-scale water electrolysis.
Its a another case on innovation for hydrogen production. This too has a long way to go, but with the future of platinum looking less and less bright as a catalyst, the costs for the hardware are going to go down. What remains to hold up the market is storage. Holding on to the smallest atom that seems determined to seep out of about everything so far, remains a problem.
Its too bad that great work like this is stymied by the insufferable indefatigable ignorance driven by the anti-carbon folks. Process that hydrogen with some carbon and suddenly the hydrogen economy could take off.
Comments
Feedburner
Reddit
Stumbleupon
