Researchers tap limitless hydrogen
Collaboration between British, Chinese leads to new method for cracking water molecules
Acollaboration of British and Chinese researchers has taken the world one step closer to a future in which clean renewable energy is a widespread reality. First announced in November, an inorganic sulphur material has been used as a catalyst to split water molecules to obtain pure hydrogen. A pure hydrogen fuel would solve the global issue of greenhouse gases, and also come with an unlimited supply of precursor material — just water.
The implications of this first step could be huge, and it comes at a time when international research budgets around the world are dwindling.
The technology could be the start of the next significant industrial revolution since the discovery of coal, so it’s important to know just how this process works, and what is important in the new discovery.
Water-splitting technology, despite the recent announcement, actually goes back 3 billion years. The process of photocatalytic water splitting occurs naturally in photosynthesis, so the complex biological pathways that convert photons into chemical energy are happening in plants all around us all the time.
Scientists have previously managed to mimic the advanced secrets of biochemical evolution. However, we are still a long way from unlocking the full set of secret instructions for clean energy production, honed first by the cyano- bacteria in Earth’s ancient Archean period.
The Archean geological period began immediately after the Hadean period 4.6 billion years ago — (named for Hades the Greek god of the underworld, because of Earth’s hellish conditions at the time). Water-splitting technology appeared not long after our planet began forming as a lifeless rocky inferno, meaning that scientists are still working out how to copy a primeval energy production process that’s dated closer to the formation of the Earth and moon than human existence.
However, researchers from the University of Liverpool, University College London and East China University of Science and Technology are now closer to such cosmic genius with the new material researchers used in the photocatalytic water-splitting process. The new sulphur-based catalyst maintains the effectiveness of inorganic catalysts but also retains the simplicity offered by organic catalysts. The process is efficient: It merely requires reagents such as sodium sulfide (a common and fairly cheap material used in the paper and pulp industry) to replace the sulphur that decays in the catalyzing process. Maintenance of the process is much more efficient than previous methods used to extract hydrogen, researchers say, and in theory could be much cheaper if eventually brought to a commercial level.
The research was funded partly by the China Scholarship Council through a program that attracts Chinese PhD students to carry out studies at the University of Liverpool Materials Innovation Factory.