{"id":11580,"date":"2017-09-11T17:16:23","date_gmt":"2017-09-12T00:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/?p=11580"},"modified":"2017-09-11T17:16:23","modified_gmt":"2017-09-12T00:16:23","slug":"cheaper-hydrogen-and-fuel-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/cheaper-hydrogen-and-fuel-cells\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheaper Hydrogen and Fuel Cells"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hydrogen would be a wonderful fuel if it were easy to get and easy to use.\u00a0 It makes up 90 percent of all atoms in the universe, equal to about 75 percent of all the mass.\u00a0 Hydrogen has been expensive to obtain because quite often its extraction from other matter entails using expensive catalysts such as platinum.<\/p>\n

Russia and America Team Up to Get Cheap Hydrogen<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Scientists from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, working with researchers at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT)<\/a> and in Jinan, China combined efforts to produce hydrogen using sunlight and photosensitive lipids<\/a>.\u00a0 We associate lipids with getting blood drawn at the clinic, and waiting patiently to see how our cholesterol and triglycerides are doing.\u00a0 Lipids are water insoluble fats, and are a key to this inexpensive method of extracting hydrogen.<\/p>\n

Using titanium dioxide as a photocatalyst, the teams \u201cinserted a photosensitive protein into nanodiscs \u2014 made from circular fragments of cell membrane composed of a lipid bilayer \u2014 to mimic a natural cell membrane called bacteriorhodopsin.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Combining fats (lipids) with titanium dioxide, immersing the nanodisc in water makes budget hydrogen. \u00a0Courtesy: Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT)<\/p><\/div>\n

Placing the nanodiscs, the titanium dioxide and a small amount of platinum (to increase reactivity) in water released hydrogen when the setup was exposed to green or white light.\u00a0 White light generated 74 times more hydrogen than the green light, though.\u00a0 According to Futurism.com,<\/em> \u201cMIPT\u2019s Vladimir Chupin, whose work is usually in anti-aging research,\u00a0said in a press release<\/a>. \u2018However, the recent joint study with our U.S. colleagues shows that by bringing together biological and technical materials, nanodiscs can be used to obtain hydrogen fuel.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Who know light and fats could make a clean energy product?<\/p>\n

Durable and Frugal Fuel Cells<\/strong><\/p>\n

University of Delaware Researchers developed a new technology that could speed up the commercialization of fuel cell vehicles.<\/a>\u00a0 Since platinum is commonly used as a catalyst in fuel cells designed to burn hydrogen, this has slowed adoption because of high costs \u2013 about $30,000 per kilogram ($13,600 per pound).\u00a0 The UD team used tungsten carbide, which sells for around $150 per kilogram ($68 per pound) and used a novel method to turn it into nanoparticles. Dionisios Vlachos, director of UD’s Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation, explains, “The material is typically made at very high temperatures, about 1,500 degrees Celsius, and at these temperatures, it grows big and has little surface area for chemistry to take place on. \u00a0Our approach is one of the first to make nanoscale material of high surface area that can be commercially relevant for catalysis.”<\/p>\n

Making the nanoparticles through hydrothermal treatment, separation, reduction, carburization and other processes, “We can isolate the individual tungsten carbide nanoparticles during the process and make a very uniform distribution of particle size,” Weiqing Zheng, a research associate at the Catalysis Center, explains.<\/p>\n

Like the nanodisc researchers who used titanium dioxide as a budget alternative to platinum, University of Delaware scientists incorporated their tungsten carbide nanoparticles into a membrane \u2013 but in this case, the proton exchange membrane in a fuel cell (PEMFC).\u00a0 This membrane splits H2 into ions (protons) and delivers them to the cathode, which delivers current.\u00a0 This membrane wears out from going through repeated wet\/dry cycles, mainly because the reaction in the cell produces heat and water \u2013 the \u201cexhaust\u201d for a fuel-cell powered vehicle.<\/p>\n