New approach to water splitting could improve hydrogen production
http://news.mst.edu/2016/12/new-approach-to-water-splitting-could-improve-hydrogen-production/[font face=Serif][font size=5]New approach to water splitting could improve hydrogen production[/font]
December 17, 2016 by Andrew Careaga
[font size=3]A team of researchers from Missouri University of Science and Technology and National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece have demonstrated a more efficient, less cost-prohibitive way to split water into its elements of hydrogen and oxygen. Their approach could make hydrogen fuel a more viable energy source in the future while addressing the technological challenge of developing clean and renewable energy without depleting earths natural preserves.
In research published recently in the journal
ChemSusChem (Chemistry & Sustainability Energy & Materials), Dr. Manashi Nath, associate professor of chemistry at Missouri S&T, and her colleagues describe how a catalyst using the metal nickel tetrahedrally coordinated to selenium in a coordination complex resulted in a more efficient approach to splitting water via electrolysis. The use of nickel, which the researchers describe as an earth-abundant resource, could make the process of water splitting more feasible as a means to develop clean hydrogen as an energy source from water.
Most methods for producing hydrogen and oxygen from water require large amounts of energy and are cost-prohibitive. In addition, the best catalysts to obtain hydrogen from water require the use of expensive precious metals, such as platinum, and are therefore not competitive with current approaches to energy production.
But the research by Nath and her colleagues show that an electrocatalyst containing nickel and selenium is able to produce hydrogen and oxygen from water in a more efficient, less expensive manner than other methods.
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