Researchers at the Riken Center for Sustainable Resource Science in Japan may have taken a big step toward economical production of hydrogen fuel; the key to this breakthrough appears to be a combination of manganese with iridium, a rare metal generally required in the production of hydrogen.
Currently, the production of hydrogen requires a catalyst to break the water bonds and release the product, with iridium being the best catalyst known to date. However, the rarity of this metal makes its large-scale use extremely expensive according to the Study co-author Xuan Kong Iridium is so rare that it is estimated that increasing global hydrogen production to the terawatt scale would require 40 years to produce the necessary iridium.
Riken researchers found that manganese can help significantly reduce the amount of iridium needed, reaching a reduction of up to 95 percent, this decrease does not affect hydrogen production, which could make hydrogen fuel a realistic alternative. to carbon-based fuels.
This is especially true considering that 70 percent of the earth is covered by the raw resource needed to produce fuel, water, yet it is not yet possible to extract hydrogen from water on a scale that rivals energy-based energy production. in fossil fuels.
The researchers managed to maintain hydrogen production at 82% efficiency for more than 3,000 hours using less iridium and a proton exchange membrane electrolyzer, this achievement was possible by dispersing individual iridium atoms in a piece of manganese oxide avoiding the agglomeration.
The interaction between manganese oxide and iridium was crucial to the success as the iridium resulting from this interaction was in a rare and highly active oxidation state, the researchers believe that this new catalyst can be easily transferred to real-world applications. immediately increasing the capacity of the PEM electrolyzers.
In the future the team plans to continue collaborating with industry partners to further improve the original catalyst and study the chemical interaction between iridium and manganese oxide with the goal of further reducing the amount of iridium needed.
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16/05/2024
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