Hydrogen fuel cell cars seem a nice alternative to classic EVs. Still, the thing is that you need a lot of hydrogen, into which you need to invest and also create an expensive infrastructure. Luckily, a Stanford team now reports that they made a cheap catalyst to aid with creating hydrogen, at least.
Let us put you up to speed right quick. The easiest way to make hydrogen is to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, in a process called hydrolysis, which implies an electric current being passed through the water - kinda like the reverse process going into a fuel cell.
But being the easiest method doesn’t necessarily mean it’s also the most efficient. To be somehow more efficient, the process uses platinum as a catalyst. Which, as you might know, is too expensive and rare to be implemented everywhere.
Now for the good part - the researchers at Stanford University managed to develop a nickel-based catalyst for low-cost electrolysis, good enough to replace platinum. It is made by nanoscale nickel oxide/nickel heterostructure formed on carbon nanotube sidewalls.
“Here, we report a nickel oxide/nickel (NiO/Ni) hetero-junction-like structure attached to mildly oxidized carbon nanotube (NiO/Ni-CNT) exhibiting high HER catalytic activity close to commercial Pt/C catalysts in several types of basic solutions (pH = 9.5–14),” says the report. “The NiO/Ni nano-hybrids is fabricated serendipitously in a low-pressure thermal annealing experiment, affording partial reduction of nickel hydroxide (Ni(OH)2) coated on oxidized CNTs that acts as an interacting substrate to impede complete reduction and aggregation of Ni.”
In other words, the nickel/nickel-oxide catalyst also requires a significantly lower voltage to split the water and if further researching gets done to improve the durability of such a device, it might allow a water-splitter to be powered by sun rays. The researchers actually admitted a solar powered hydrolysis machine is on their to-do-list.
Google News