Scientists show how using only water, iron, nickel and electricity can create hydrogen energy much more cheaply than before.

Hydrogen-powered cars may soon become more than just a novelty after a UNSW-led team of scientists demonstrated a much cheaper and sustainable way to create the hydrogen required to power them.

In research published in Nature Communications recently, scientists from UNSW Sydney, Griffith University and Swinburne University of Technology showed that capturing hydrogen by splitting it from oxygen in water can be achieved by using low-cost metals like iron and nickel as catalysts, which speed up this chemical reaction while requiring less energy.

“What we do is coat the electrodes with our catalyst to reduce energy consumption,” he says. “On this catalyst there is a tiny nano-scale interface where the iron and nickel meet at the atomic level, which becomes an active site for splitting water. This is where hydrogen can be split from oxygen and captured as fuel, and the oxygen can be released as an environmentally-friendly waste.”

Iron and nickel, which are found in abundance on Earth, would replace precious metals ruthenium, platinum and iridium that up until now are regarded as benchmark catalysts in the ‘water-splitting’ process.

UNSW School of Chemistry’s Professor Chuan Zhao says in water splitting, two electrodes apply an electric charge to water which enables hydrogen to be split from oxygen and used as energy in a fuel cell.

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Full article: https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/scientists-find-cheaper-way-make-hydrogen-energy-out-water