From Stanford University something familiar to most anyone who has taken science – electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Stanford scientists develop a water splitter that runs on an ordinary AAA battery
In 2015, American consumers will finally be able to purchase fuel cell cars from Toyota and other manufacturers. Although touted as zero-emissions vehicles, most of the cars will run on hydrogen made from natural gas, a fossil fuel that contributes to global warming.
Now scientists at Stanford University have developed a low-cost, emissions-free device that uses an ordinary AAA battery to produce hydrogen by water electrolysis. The battery sends an electric current through two electrodes that split liquid water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Unlike other water splitters that use precious-metal catalysts, the electrodes in the Stanford device are made of inexpensive and abundant nickel and iron.
“Using nickel and iron, which are cheap materials, we were able to make the electrocatalysts active enough to split water at room temperature with a single 1.5-volt battery,” said Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford. “This is the first time anyone has used non-precious metal catalysts to split water at a voltage that low. It’s quite remarkable, because normally you need expensive metals, like platinum or iridium, to achieve that voltage.”
In addition to producing hydrogen, the novel water splitter could be used to make chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide, another important industrial chemical, according to Dai. He and his colleagues describe the new device in a study published in the Aug. 22 issue of the journal Nature Communications.
The promise of hydrogen
Automakers have long considered the hydrogen fuel cell a promising alternative to the gasoline engine. Fuel cell technology is essentially water splitting in reverse. A fuel cell combines stored hydrogen gas with oxygen from the air to produce electricity, which powers the car. The only byproduct is water – unlike gasoline combustion, which emits carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
Earlier this year, Hyundai began leasing fuel cell vehicles in Southern California. Toyota and Honda will begin selling fuel cell cars in 2015. Most of these vehicles will run on fuel manufactured at large industrial plants that produce hydrogen by combining very hot steam and natural gas, an energy-intensive process that releases carbon dioxide as a byproduct.
Splitting water to make hydrogen requires no fossil fuels and emits no greenhouse gases. But scientists have yet to develop an affordable, active water splitter with catalysts capable of working at industrial scales.
“It’s been a constant pursuit for decades to make low-cost electrocatalysts with high activity and long durability,” Dai said. “When we found out that a nickel-based catalyst is as effective as platinum, it came as a complete surprise.”
Saving energy and money
The discovery was made by Stanford graduate student Ming Gong, co-lead author of the study. “Ming discovered a nickel-metal/nickel-oxide structure that turns out to be more active than pure nickel metal or pure nickel oxide alone,” Dai said. “This novel structure favors hydrogen electrocatalysis, but we still don’t fully understand the science behind it.”
The nickel/nickel-oxide catalyst significantly lowers the voltage required to split water, which could eventually save hydrogen producers billions of dollars in electricity costs, according to Gong. His next goal is to improve the durability of the device.
“The electrodes are fairly stable, but they do slowly decay over time,” he said. “The current device would probably run for days, but weeks or months would be preferable. That goal is achievable based on my most recent results.”
The researchers also plan to develop a water splitter than runs on electricity produced by solar energy.
“Hydrogen is an ideal fuel for powering vehicles, buildings and storing renewable energy on the grid,” said Dai. “We’re very glad that we were able to make a catalyst that’s very active and low cost. This shows that through nanoscale engineering of materials we can really make a difference in how we make fuels and consume energy.”
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TRM says:
August 22, 2014 at 12:09 pm
“In this instance I agree with Mosh. Hindenwhat? Have you ever heard of hydride tanks? Stores hydrogen in gaseous form and can be shot with incendiary bullets without exploding. Been available since the 1980s. ”
So how many pounds of hydride do you need to store a pound of hydrogen.
It’s difficult to find numbers. I read some remarks that new research comes close to achieving the energy density (by volume I assume) of liquid hydrogen. Which is 4 times lower than the energy density of gasoline. Given that we’re dealing with some metal; and probably we don’t want to deplete the Lithium stockpile for this as that’s a very expensive one that we already want for batteries, what weight are we dealing with, 10 times the weight of a gasoline tank for the same range? This assumes that the specific weight of the metal hydride is just 2.5 times the weight of gasoline – probably it’s worse than that.
Furthermore, the re-hydration of the “hydride tank” seems to be a slow process – so it looks to me like you will end up with the performance and drawbacks of a Li-Ion-battery car with regards to recharging time, weight and range.
M Courtney says:
August 22, 2014 at 12:18 pm
“They won’t degrade.
They will leak but so what… it’s free hydrogen form a windmill and I’m looking at smoothing the output. I would put them in a ventilated place.”
What you do is you put a spark plug on the ceiling at the highest point where the H2 tends to collect. We did that in the German nuclear reactors to avoid spectacular fireworks. Light water reactors tend to produce some H atoms and they collect at the top of the building or reactor vessel. You just burn it off all the time.
I am as skeptical as many in the audience, but as a materials scientist, I find this quite interesting. Clearly, the research is in its infancy (electrode life decays in days). A number of comments are directed at hydrogen powered vehicles–I agree it’s a dumb idea. The very idea of high pressure hydrogen bottles zipping around the highways is a nightmare about to happen. I don’t really see the electrolysis route for balancing wind power–the unpredictable nature of wind makes capacity matching another nightmare. The story does grab my attention as a load leveler for solar voltaic sources. I realize the poor economics to begin with, but the concept of electrolysis/fuel cell storage could be an alternative to Greens (or folks in the back country) who aren’t big fans of a bank of lead acid batteries in their basement. I’ll be curious to see whether and how this makes it to market.
” M Courtney says: August 22, 2014 at 11:31 am
Don’t knock cheaper catalysts just because the inventor thinks of the wrong application.
Not all inventors are good businessmen.
Forget hydrogen cars and look at cheaper hydrogen.”
Hear, hear!! Perfectly put. Funny but the article and a lot of comments here are in the same section of unreality 🙂
TRM and M Courtney:
I intend no insult to anyone by providing this one reply to your posts at August 22, 2014 at 12:09 pm and August 22, 2014 at 12:18 pm, repectively.
If the storage problem were solved then hydrogen storage would be used as a supplement to pumped storage for grid peak demand matching.
I am not familiar with “hydride tanks” so can make no response other than the observation that they are not used at the large scale of supplement to pumped storage.
I am familiar with zeolites which are used in catalysts in the hydrogenation process I mentioned earlier. Surface area is large but not sufficient.
In my opinion the most likely solution to the storage problem is metal matrices. However, history shows that when there are long-standing technological problems of this kind then the solution turns out to be a surprise to everybody except its discoverer.
Richard
First, you only need to produce and store at home enough Hydrogen to refuel your car(s) so No BIG storage concerns just the electrolysis machine, a small compressor and a Tank capable of storing the gas at twice the pressure that your car is capable of storing. When you plug in at night, the pressures even out between the tanks and your car is refueled.
The Hydrogen isn’t Burnt as fuel, it is used to create ELECTRICITY through the Fuel Cell that powers your ELECTRIC MOTOR to run your car, the only byproduct is WATER as the electricity is produced by the recombination of the HYDROGEN and OXYGEN into H2O
These guys sound like they are on the verge of cold fusion.
The idea that simply because the source mechanism itself produces no CO2 taht the entire process has a zero CO2 footprint is really a comment on how stupid the writer of the article thinks the readers of the article may be.
How soon we forget.
I would suggest that anyone contemplating the future of hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen as a fuel should research the Ballard Engineering company, especially their share price. Remember them? all the hype, deals with Mercedes etc? Shares peaked at about $200 in 2000 now trading at circa $6.
Isn’t water vapor even worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas?
The late Ben Rich of Lockheed wrote a book entitled “The Skunk Works” detailing his years there and the history of Lockheed’s R&D department. One chapter deals with Lockheed foray into using hydrogen as a fuel.
The problems faced went way beyond just making H2 (i.e. hydrogen molecules work their way into steel, causing it to become brittle). The issues made the project non-viable. Lockheed actually gave the remainder of the development money BACK to the government.
Steven Mosher,
As always, thanks for the reminder.
William Handler says:
I’m with William though. I think the battery thing is misleading; it takes a lot of work to break water up.
Still, as Steven points out, no reason to sneer at an advance, even if it’s not immediately earth shaking.
Bryan A says:
August 22, 2014 at 12:42 pm
First, you only need to produce and store at home enough Hydrogen to refuel your car(s) so No BIG storage concerns just the electrolysis machine, a small compressor and a Tank capable of storing the gas at twice the pressure that your car is capable of storing. When you plug in at night, the pressures even out between the tanks and your car is refueled.
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You’ll need a water source, too.
I’d recommend you do all this outside, else Darwin Award.
Also, you will need a vast power source to gen enough hydrogen to operate your car(s).
sunshinehours1 says:
August 22, 2014 at 12:26 pm
Mosher: “Read the comments above. Note the snark. Note the dismissive tone of the commenters.”
Annoyed that your style is so easy to copy?
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not at all. pleased that it is easy to copy. amused that the hand of justice is capricious.
klem says (August 22, 2014 at 8:59 am): “I think they used to run hydrogen powered buses in British Columbia.”
Here’s an article about that:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/whistlers-hydrogen-buses-to-be-scrapped-replaced-by-diesel/article15900241/
Apparently the city just couldn’t justify the expense of the hydrogen bus fleet compared to diesel.
“Forget hydrogen cars and look at cheaper hydrogen.”
yup.
Steven Mosher says:
August 22, 2014 at 1:13 pm
“not at all. pleased that it is easy to copy. amused that the hand of justice is capricious.”
baffled that English majors write in incomplete sentences.
Actually quite a bit of foolishness on this thread.
Non-noble metal catalysts for electrolysis is a useful step forward in hydrogen production in situations where you have electricity you want to buffer as hydrogen (not just produce hydrogen per se, so this technology isn’t competing with water shift). It reduces the price because the catalyst is a significant part of the cost. Getting catalyst life up is the other challenge that doesn’t seem to be solved.
Converting electricity to hydrogen competes with other forms of energy storage. Their are a wide range of scales and durations that we need to do this on and have various technologies to do this – batteries, supercapacitors, SMES, compressed gases, pumped hydro etc etc. Hydrogen has some negatives eg storage, round trip efficiency not as high as others (each conversion ~60%, so round trip 36%). It also has some characteristics that makes it attractive in some applications, particularly if problems can be solved.
Hydrogen from electricity is indicated where losses on conversion are not a critical issue, storage requirement is short-term (i.e. less gas to store, although metal hydrides etc etc may overcome this), weight, life time and initial capital cost are (and this study helps with the last). Think of competing with batteries in remote locations for example. Transport applications are a possibility if simple round trip storage is found, but electrolysis isn’t likely to be the way the hyrdogen gets made. Japan and Toyota are doing it from natural gas for their fuel cell car roll out.
For an example of an early niche market (that could potentially be commercial with lower cost electrolysis ) have a look at this remote wind for micro-grid using the pipeline as a buffer http://www.iphe.net/docs/Renew_H2_HYLINK.pdf (somewhat dated) and http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-visit/wellington-kapiti/wellington/matiu-somes-island/features/matiu-somes-renewable-energy-system/
Mark Bofill says (August 22, 2014 at 1:03 pm ): “Still, as Steven points out, no reason to sneer at an advance, even if it’s not immediately earth shaking.”
Most of the “sneering” in this thread hasn’t been about “the advance”; it’s been about the hype surrounding it, e.g. Dai’s statement “Hydrogen is an ideal fuel…” etc. As of today, hydrogen is far from being “an ideal fuel”, mostly for reasons that have nothing to do with “the advance”.
Now I understand that scientists today feel they have to hype their work to secure funding, but when they do, they should expect a certain amount of “sneering” from the peanut gallery. 🙂
As articles mentions that same voltages are achieved by using platinum in electrodes. So they came up with cheaper catalyst.
While this is a pretty good achievement, I don’t believe that the only thing between mass usage of hydrogen is cost of catalysts, so I do not see this as having much of an effect on any existing usage of technology.
My personal “snark” isn’t aimed at the achievement, it’s aimed at the fact that even a tiny incremental discovery like this is hailed as “saving the planet”, and trots out the old “hydrogen is a great fuel for cars” line. In fact, it’s difficult to even image a more unsuitable fuel for cars than hydrogen with its incredibly low density energy, storage problems, etc.
The best fuel for cars is the one we’re currently using. Until that changes (which it won’t unless there is some unexpected breakthrough or development) then the rest is just unwarranted hype, aimed at increasing the sesame seed count of some unicorn obsessed billionaire.
It always amazes me when I type a comment, then above it appears several others saying essentially the same as I did, that weren’t there when I started typing.
may be of interest to m.courtney http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-12215386
I was at the Nurburgring a few years ago doing a few laps in my M3,when a team of techs from BMW turned up with 2 BMW 7 series with Hydrogen written down the side.I got into a conversation with them and it turned out they were testing hydrogen instead of petrol in a combustion engine.The power and torque was comparable with petrol but a little lower.They said that you could reduce the explosive tank problems by having an inert solid foam like substance in the tank which absorbed the hydrogen.Idont know if they are still working on them, now they focusing on the electric i3 and i8,who knows.
mikeishere says:
August 22, 2014 at 11:46 am
Unmentionable says: “How about distance as the denominator…”
How about what? I drew a distinction between judging risk by utility or by time. Utility in this instance is distance and time is what we all have a limited amount of. Both are valid considerations.
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I don’t even know why you nit-picked the original point, which observed that wowsers always place stumbling blocks in the way of anything new and make trite complex excuses to encourage everyone to agree to give up too early to reap the rewards of persistence. If that happened in the case of aviation’s hundreds or air crashes the technology that developed into the safest form of travel would not have developed. But you posit the fraught relevance of why air travel is according to you 10 times more likely to end in fatality than driving to the shops. Really? Must I turn that around to point out how fubar that is? OK, drive from Perth to Liverpool and take note of your fatality rate and then tell me all about utility, distance, speed, time and the safety of motoring when you arrive. 🙂
TRM says: August 22, 2014 at 12:09 pm
And now there’s Cella … http://cellaenergy.com