Cheap catalyst makes and breaks hydrogen
A team of french scientist presented a way to replace expensive and rare metal platinum used in producing hydrogen by a catalyst inspired from a living enzyme, the hydrogenase. Like its living-world model, it also works both ways, allowing to produce electricity from hydrogen.
The active site of the live hydrogenase enzyme (left) and the new catalyst (right), as illustrated by the scientists at Joseph fourier University, Grenoble, France.
(By Collin Barras, News Scientist, dec. 7 2009 )
A cheap catalyst can both generate hydrogen and release energy from it. The new material could be a breakthrough that will allow the unpredictable energy flows from wind and solar farms to be stored.
As nations attempt to put their energy consumption in order, the need for better ways to store electrical power is becoming apparent: wind and solar power installations don't always provide power when it's most needed. Batteries are one option (…) but another is converting excess electricity into hydrogen and feeding it through a fuel cell later to generate electricity.Now Vincent Artero at Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, and colleagues have shown that a cheap catalyst could be used to both generate hydrogen to store energy, and also to consume it to extract stored power.
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So far, though, the device can't compete with the power output of a conventional platinum-catalysed fuel cell, although the team haven't yet begun to optimise it for that use.
- See full article at New Scientist.
- The scientific publication can be found here in the Science, 4 December 2009 issue.
