IEEE: Carbon Fiber Cloth Can Generate Hydrogen
IEEE Spectrum | Charles Q. Choi | 21 Aug 2015
Splitting water can yield clean-burning hydrogen fuel, but catalysts that generate hydrogen are often expensive, and unstable in water. Now a team from Singapore and Taiwan have shown that carbon fiber cloths coated in inexpensive catalysts can generate hydrogen, and perform not only in water but in seawater as well. The researchers detailed their findings online August 21 in the journal Science Advances.
Image: Nanyang Technological University
The most effective catalyst for generating hydrogen is platinum. However, this metal is scarce and expensive, limiting its use in large-scale hydrogen generation. Instead, the researchers investigated molybdenum sulfide as a catalyst. Molybdenum and sulfur are respectively about 300 and more than 100,000 times more abundant than platinum.
"One hundred grams of pure molybdenum metal costs $44, while the same amount of platinum costs $3,211.86 today," says study co-author Bin Liu, a materials scientist at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore...
...Hydrogen-generating catalysts often require acidic solutions to release protons. However, this new catalyst can generate hydrogen while in water. It also requires only 200 millivolts to produce the gas, and can even operate in seawater...snip
more: http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/energy/renewables/carbon-fiber-cloth-can-generate-hydrogen
Some people say there's no reason to continue researching Hydrogen tech. That's incredible, isn't it. The innovations have barely begun.
H2 is #1
