Posted on 04/25/2022 10:03:50 AM PDT by Red Badger
Fuel Cell Being Tested The new fuel cell being tested in the lab. Credit: Imperial College London
Imperial researchers have developed a new hydrogen fuel cell that uses iron instead of rare and costly platinum, enabling greater use of the technology.
Hydrogen fuel cells convert hydrogen to electricity with just water vapor as a byproduct, making them an appealing green alternative for portable power, particularly for vehicles.
However, the expense of one of the primary components has impeded its broad adoption. The fuel cells rely on a catalyst made of platinum, which is expensive and scarce, to assist the reaction that generates power.
Now, a European team led by Imperial College London researchers has created a catalyst using only iron, carbon, and nitrogen – materials that are cheap and readily available – and shown that it can be used to operate a fuel cell at high power. Their results are published today (April 25, 2022) in Nature Catalysis.
Lead researcher Professor Anthony Kucernak, from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial, said: “Currently, around 60% of the cost of a single fuel cell is the platinum for the catalyst. To make fuel cells a real viable alternative to fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, for example, we need to bring that cost down.
“Our cheaper catalyst design should make this a reality, and allow deployment of significantly more renewable energy systems that use hydrogen as fuel, ultimately reducing greenhouse gas emissions and putting the world on a path to net-zero emissions.”
The team’s innovation was to produce a catalyst where all the iron was dispersed as single atoms within an electrically conducting carbon matrix. Single-atom iron has different chemical properties than bulk iron, where all the atoms are clustered together, making it more reactive.
These properties mean the iron boosts the reactions needed in the fuel cell, acting as a good substitute for platinum. In lab tests, the team showed that a single-atom iron catalyst has performance approaching that of platinum-based catalysts in a real fuel cell system.
As well as producing a cheaper catalyst for fuel cells, the method the team developed to create could be adapted for other catalysts for other processes, such as chemical reactions using atmospheric oxygen as a reactant instead of expensive chemical oxidants, and in the treatment of wastewater using air to remove harmful contaminants.
First author Dr. Asad Mehmood, from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial, said: “We have developed a new approach to make a range of ‘single atom’ catalysts that offer an opportunity to allow a range of new chemical and electrochemical processes. Specifically, we used a unique synthetic method, called transmetallation, to avoid forming iron clusters during synthesis. This process should be beneficial to other scientists looking to prepare a similar type of catalyst.”
The team collaborated with UK fuel cell catalyst manufacturer Johnson Matthey to test the catalyst in appropriate systems and hope to scale up their new catalyst so it can be used in commercial fuel cells. In the meantime, they are working to improve the stability of the catalyst, so it matches platinum in durability as well as performance.
Reference: “High loading of single atomic iron sites in Fe–NC oxygen reduction catalysts for proton exchange membrane fuel cells” 25 April 2022, Nature Catalysis.
DOI: 10.1038/s41929-022-00772-9
*yawn*
.
how do you keep it from rusting?
Someday, we shall have better “green” energy technologies—when we really need them!
There’s really no need to rush, unless you’re a tyrant trying to crush humanity!! Modern civilization cannot be run on solar, wind, and batteries!!!!
And then converts to fire.
Now crooks won’t try to steal your fuel cell just to get the platinum.
Yep just around the corner. again
Kinda my thought too. And, I have some experience with hydrogen.
But da Erf! We gots ta save da Erf!...............
WD40..................
Modern civilization, no. Medieval Civilization, yes.............
Good News, surely.
Ahh...Zirconium
Since catalytic converters also use platinum and since they won’t be necessary with a hydrogen fuel cell, then I would think that there would be a cost offset.
Am I missing something here?
Meanwhile battery costs keep going down and I get about 95% round trip efficiency from that power storage.
Platinum is used in a myriad of things, precision temperature sensors, jewellry, metallurgy, medicine, etc.................
Look up Formenergy they are commercializing a Iron air battery that is based on the Edison cell but w/o the nickel side of the cell. Edison cells have cycle lifetimes in the 40,000+ range there are Edison cells from over 100 years ago still in active use. They are targeting $20 kWh in LCOS that’s nothing short of a paradigm shift. Even at 50% efficiency at those costs you could put up panels for 18 cents per watt lose 50% and still be cheaper than the grid wholesale even three times cheaper than retail.Iron cells are not 50% they are 90+% round trip efficient. Making the numbers even better. The batteries are the size of washing machines and industrial strength no fragile lithium cells. Georgia LP just signed up to do the first grid scale test with 1500 megawatts hours of storage that’s equal to one of the South Texas nuclear plants reactor output for an hour. Or a large sized Hydro electric plant. They plan on using it to store solar during the day and let it back to the grid at night. With Edison cell cycle lifetimes as all Iron anode exhibit they should easily get too $20 kWh the expensive part is the nickel cathode. Iron is cheap and easy to recycle as well. It’s one of the most abundant elements on earth second only to aluminum and silicon in the crust. For off grid set up Formenergy which is a spin-off of MIT is going to set the bar for storage. Iron nickel cells are routinely used for off grid applications today they beat lead acid in energy metric including LCOS which is levelized cost of storage the all in over the entire life span cost to storage energy round trip.
Sounds promising and fantastic. Let entrepreneurial and technical research lead the way and not government edicts nor regulations. Develop away but leftards need to stop vilifying fossil fuels which are very necessary for current production of systems that fuel the economy. Dont destroy what currently is working in the name of ‘progress’.
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