Posted on 10/31/2018, 1:03:23 AM by SJackson
Researchers say they’ve unlocked a mechanism enabling use of solar energy to split hydrogen peroxide, potentially helping create cheap, efficient and clean fuel
A team of Israeli researchers says it has taken an important step toward the creation of environmentally friendly hydrogen-fueled cars.
The extraction of energy from hydrogen gas is a carbon-neutral, and thus environmentally friendly, process, but there’s a catch: pure hydrogen gas is almost impossible to find on Earth. To this day, the main means for producing hydrogen gas at industrial scales are inefficient and produce the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
o scientists have been searching for years for carbon-neutral way to mass-produce hydrogen gas, which in turn could provide for a safe, clean energy source for cars, factories and more.
One of the most abundant potential sources for hydrogen is water. If scientists are able to efficiently split the water molecule H₂O into its component parts, it could force hydrogen molecules, H₂, to interact with oxygen molecules, O₂, in a process that would release a large amount of energy, and whose waste product is harmless water vapor.
But efforts to perfect the chemical mechanism have until now led to methods that expend huge amounts of energy in order to produce the reaction.
Now, scientists at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba and the Technion in Haifa say they have found a key missing link in a chemical process involving solar power that could allow for the ongoing, automatic conversion of water into hydrogen fuel in a way that could become efficient enough to allow for the mass-production of vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells. These are easier to refuel than electric batteries and should allow for far higher mileage than current battery technology allows.
In an announcement to the media Tuesday, researchers Arik Yochelis and Iris Visoly-Fisher of Ben-Gurion University and Avner Rothschild of the Technion said they discovered a chemical mechanism by which hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) is photochemically split over iron-oxide photo-electrodes.
The process relies on solar energy, rather than on injecting huge amounts of man-made energy into the reaction, as current methods demand.
They published their findings October 9 in the journal Nature.
“Beyond the scientific breakthrough, we have shown that the photo-electrochemical reaction mechanism belongs to a family of chemical reactions for which Prof. Gerhard Ertl was awarded with a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, about a decade ago. Our discovery opens new strategies for photochemical processes,” Yochelis is quoted as saying.
Ertl won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on chemical interactions on solid surfaces, which the Nobel prize committee said had profound implications for the development of non-polluting fuel cells, the study of climate change, and more.
The new research was funded by the Israeli ministries of energy and science, the European Research Council and the Adelis Foundation.
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Have been hearing about the potential of fuel cells for a couple decades. I presume this is a cost effective way of fueling them.
Yeah, it’s that useless Israel again, who we send aid to. Where do you think a LOT of your favorite technology comes from?
We hear about this every couple of years and then it just disappears.
Sorry but water vapor is the king of greenhouse gasses. The greenies will never approve.
I guess the Arabs will boycott this, since it was invented by Jews.
“harmless water vapor” eh?
Actually one of the most powerful greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
if you are worried about that sort of thing.
And the Joooos invented Astroturf!
The Jooooos hate grass.....
Well, that’s what O’Brien told me.
Actually it dissipates. This happens to some of my most astounding discoveries.
I’ve been hearing about this particular “discovery” for about 40 years. Someday it will be true.
Hydrogen does not behave well at room temperature.
Gasoline, on the other hand, can be handled relatively safely by the majority of the population.
Hydrogen is NOT the answer.
Next question, please.
What will the Ashkenazim think of next?
But since the hydrogen came from splitting water it is not net addition. Every molecule of hydrogen made took a water. The cell just gives it back
The key in all these catalysts is turnover. How much hydrogen can you get before the reaction breaks down
This reaction would, I think, be water neutral.
2 H2O + Sunlight -> 2 H2 + O2
When the H2 is burned, it recombines with the O2 to form water. It wouldn’t be 100% efficient. Some H2 and O2 would get out of the process and end up in the atmosphere.
So unless I misunderstand the article, this process would use more water than it would produce.
Note, they don’t talk about the efficiency of the process in converting sunlight and water into useable H2. So I suspect it’s pretty low at this point and would take up a whole lot of square miles of solar collection.
If this works, the oil nations of the Gulf are toast; they have no other product.
Finally! My Hydrogen Peroxide well is going to be worth something!!!!!!
Woo Hoo!
Oops. It’s H2O2, not H2O. Changes the equation but not the conclusion that it uses more “water” than it produces. The H202 is reactive and will end up making water and oxygen so you can count it as water.
water vapor is the problem, not total water.
If you’re going to make hydrogen from hydrogen peroxide, you’re going to need a lot of hydrogen peroxide. And how do we make hydrogen peroxide in large scale amounts these days? By a process that requires hydrogen as the key reactant.
So at least by contemporary technology, what’s described here is the chemical equivalent of a circular argument. If somebody comes up with a cheap, alternative route to hydrogen peroxide, now that might be a different story.
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