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A Cheaper Way to Make Hydrogen from Water

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The Future of Energy

9 comments

Martin LaMonica

March 28, 2013

A Cheaper Way to Make Hydrogen from Water

University of Calgary researchers create new method for making water-splitting catalysts using abundant metals.

Two electrodes coated with Fe40Ni60O films produce hydrogen and oxygen from water using less electricity than without a catalyst. Credit: University of Calgary.

One of the main barriers blocking wide-scale use of fuel cells is the expensive catalysts used to produce hydrogen fuel from water. Researchers at the University of Calgary say they have developed a novel method for making catalysts using inexpensive metals.

Two chemistry professors—Curtis Berlinguette and Simon Trudel—today published a paper in Science showing how their electrocatalysts perform as well as more expensive materials. They have patented their production method and have formed a company called FireWater Fuel which plans to have a product available as early as next year. The goal is to make an electrolyzer—a device that splits water to make hydrogen and oxygen fuels—that is affordable enough for businesses and consumers.

Their invention is making catalysts from a combination of metals compounds that use iron, cobalt, and nickel. The process, which treats metal compounds or oxides with light, doesn’t require high temperatures.

“The discovery in our paper is the ability to make catalyst films with a uniform distribution of multiple metals,” Berlinguette says. “We use a technique that uses light to decompose environmentally benign precursors in air into our catalytic films. The process is scalable and translates to almost every metal in the periodic table.”

Conventional catalysts are made with rare or expensive metals, such as platinum. The Calgary researchers’ method produces films that are amorphous in their molecular shape, rather than a crystalline structure. That highly disordered structure actually makes them more reactive.

Harvard professor Daniel Nocera, while at MIT, introduced a low-cost catalyst made of an amorphous cobalt oxide for splitting water to make hydrogen fuel. A company called Sun Catalytix was formed in 2009 using venture and government funding to commercialize his work but it has struggled to make a viable product and has since shifted its focus to making flow batteries. (See, Sun Catalytix Seeks Second Act with Flow Battery.)

Berlinguette says he and Trudel have advanced previous work because their process can be used on any metal on the Periodic Table and combines multiple metals. “Amorphous heterogeneous catalysts are well known,” he says. “The problem is that it is difficult to make amorphous materials with many other metals (than cobalt oxide) and it is infinitely more difficult to introduce multiple types of metals into amorphous films.”

A commercially viable electrolyzer is considered a key component to the long-sought hydrogen economy. A good catalyst can lower the amount of electricity that is needed to produce hydrogen and oxygen from water. The hydrogen would then be stored in tanks and fed into fuel cell to produce electricity as needed.

Initially, FireWater Fuel intends to develop an electrolyzer to produce hydrogen for energy storage at wind farms. It intends to create a commercial prototype of a freezer-size electrolyzer that would convert a few liters of water a day to electricity for consumers by 2015.

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rajpathi.yadav 5ptsFeatured
Jan 5, 2014

how much hydrogen is needed for a house to produce its own electricity

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eric25001 5ptsFeatured
Mar 31, 2013

If every home could have such a working device producing all the home energy demands for 5 cents per Kilowatt hour then a robust cheap clean energy system that is very decenteralized is on the horizon.  Lets talk again in 3 years.  Eric

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NormanHanscombe 5ptsFeatured
Mar 31, 2013

@eric25001 Erica, that's a very important if. My grandmother used to say that if 'ifs' and 'buts' were pots and pans, there'd be no need for tinkers.

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Hakapes 5ptsFeatured
Mar 31, 2013

Maybe it will bring down Hydrogen prices to a level that it will be a commodity, and can be used to many energy-demanding processes.

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mfolbe 5ptsFeatured
Mar 29, 2013

Any idea how much energy is saved in the process?

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NormanHanscombe 5ptsFeatured
Mar 29, 2013

An article with more positive news than is sometimes the case, Martin. Let's hope it doesn't encourage too many of the usual suspects to claim this means there's now no need to worry about declining reserves of anything.

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NormanHanscombe 5ptsFeatured
Mar 29, 2013

@wilhelm woess @NormanHanscombe Wilhelm, in some ways I'm a passenger on the Titanic, hoping a lifeboat will turn up, while despairing of fellow passengers engaging in yoga to see if they can be saved by acquiring the skill of self-levitation. Meanwhile I just try to enjoy the band's music.

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Spicoli 5ptsFeatured
Mar 29, 2013

@wilhelm woess @NormanHanscombe It does say the process is scalable.

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dfgriggs 5ptsFeatured
May 2, 2013

@wilhelm woess @Spicoli @NormanHanscombe

The larger electrolyzer for wind turbines is their *first* planned product.  The home device would come a year later.  In regard to some other comments, note that this is a means of energy storage, not energy generation.   There would be inevitable losses -- the company just hopes to reduce those losses.

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