Posted on 09/14/2021 7:28:11 AM PDT by Red Badger
Researchers at the University of Central Florida have designed for the first time a nanoscale material that can efficiently split seawater into oxygen and a clean energy fuel — hydrogen.
The material offers the high performance and stability needed for industrial-scale electrolysis, which could produce a clean energy fuel from seawater.
Hydrogen fuel derived from the sea could be an abundant and sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, but the potential power source has been limited by technical challenges, including how to practically harvest it.
Researchers at the University of Central Florida have designed for the first time a nanoscale material that can efficiently split seawater into oxygen and a clean energy fuel — hydrogen. The process of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen is known as electrolysis and effectively doing it has been a challenge until now.
The stable, and long-lasting nanoscale material to catalyze the reaction, which the UCF team developed, is explained this month in the journal Advanced Materials.
“This development will open a new window for efficiently producing clean hydrogen fuel from seawater,” says Yang Yang, an associate professor in UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center and study co-author.
Hydrogen is a form of renewable energy that—if made cheaper and easier to produce—can have a major role in combating climate change, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Hydrogen could be converted into electricity to use in fuel cell technology that generates water as product and makes an overall sustainable energy cycle, Yang says.
How It Works The researchers developed a thin-film material with nanostructures on the surface made of nickel selenide with added, or “doped,” iron and phosphor. This combination offers the high performance and stability that are needed for industrial-scale electrolysis but that has been difficult to achieve because of issues, such as competing reactions, within the system that threaten efficiency.
The new material balances the competing reactions in a way that is low-cost and high-performance, Yang says.
Using their design, the researchers achieved high efficiency and long-term stability for more than 200 hours.
“The seawater electrolysis performance achieved by the dual-doped film far surpasses those of the most recently reported, state-of-the-art electrolysis catalysts and meets the demanding requirements needed for practical application in the industries,” Yang says.
The researcher says the team will work to continue to improve the electrical efficiency of the materials they’ve developed. They are also looking for opportunities and funding to accelerate and help commercialize the work.
Reference: “Dual-Doping and Synergism toward High-Performance Seawater Electrolysis” by Jinfa Chang, Guanzhi Wang, Zhenzhong Yang, Boyang Li, Qi Wang, Ruslan Kuliiev, Nina Orlovskaya, Meng Gu, Yingge Du, Guofeng Wang and Yang Yang, 8 July 2021, Advanced Materials. DOI: 10.1002/adma.202101425
More About The Team
Co-authors included Jinfa Chang, a postdoctoral scholar, and Guanzhi Wang, a doctoral student in materials science engineering, both with UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center; and Ruslan Kuliiev ’20MS, a graduate of UCF’s Master’s in Aerospace Engineering program, and Nina Orlovskaya, an associate professor with UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Renewable Energy and Chemical Transformation Cluster.
Yang holds joint appointments in UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, which is part of the university’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. He is a member of UCF’s Renewable Energy and Chemical Transformation (REACT) Cluster. He also holds a secondary joint-appointment in UCF’s Department of Chemistry. Before joining UCF in 2015, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Rice University and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. He received his doctorate in materials science from Tsinghua University in China.
Some have said here that the catalyst is expensive...............
For the water itself, natural evaporation is simple; think of a lifeboat emergency fresh water kit, writ large. No power source needed except to pump in the seawater and pump away the fresh water. Byproduct of useful sea salt and minerals, too.
Grampa’s dream of perpetual motion has finally been achieved. To bad he’s not around to see it.
As in old gas stations converting or new facilities pumping hydrogen to your car? If so, think of the new infra-structure that would need. Heck, EV's still have limited charging stations. I'm not against new technology, I just look at the cost and distribution logistics it would take to replace fossil fuels in the country.
Electrolysis requires energy - electricity. The ‘miracle Green fuel’, hydrogen, is produced using electricity produced by some other means, solar, wind, hydro, fossil fuel or nuclear.
Then there is also electricity produced by legislative fiat!
“You know, “Stroke of the pen, law of the land! Kind of cool!” Paul Begala, Bill Clinton advisor
Ooops, the Laws of Physics and Chemistry are not subject to the Law of the Land, no matter what leftist politicians, environmentalist and MSM pundits believe.
If the aforementioned experts really wanted to solve the “Carbon Crisis” and the water crisis, they’d get their billionaire donors to invest in Molten Salt Thorium reactors, Small Modular Reactors, etc. Use thes to run desalination plants, hydrogen plants, nuclear waste conversion plants.
ThorCon
FLiBe
Elysium Industries
Oh they know but are counting on all the dumbasses out here to buy it. Grrrrrrrrr!
Is that some sort of Hydrogen ping list?
Notice how the flames shoot upwards rather than downwards like with gasoline and LNG. Hydrogen is safer in that regards.
Dual-Doping and Synergism toward High-Performance Seawater Electrolysis
Jinfa Chang,Guanzhi Wang,Zhenzhong Yang,Boyang Li,Qi Wang,Ruslan Kuliiev,Nina Orlovskaya,Meng Gu,Yingge Du,Guofeng Wang,Yang Yang,
First published: 08 July 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202101425
Abstract
Hydrogen (H2) production from direct seawater electrolysis is an economically appealing yet fundamentally and technically challenging approach to harvest clean energy. The current seawater electrolysis technology is significantly hindered by the poor stability and low selectivity of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) due to the competition with chlorine evolution reaction in practical application.
Herein, iron and phosphor dual-doped nickel selenide nanoporous films (Fe,P-NiSe2 NFs) are rationally designed as bifunctional catalysts for high-efficiency direct seawater electrolysis. The doping of Fe cation increases the selectivity and Faraday efficiency (FE) of the OER.
While the doping of P anions improves the electronic conductivity and prevents the dissolution of selenide by forming a passivation layer containing P–O species. The Fe-dopant is identified as the primary active site for the hydrogen evolution reaction, and meanwhile, stimulates the adjacent Ni atoms as active centers for the OER.
The experimental analyses and theoretical calculations provide an insightful understanding of the roles of dual-dopants in boosting seawater electrolysis. As a result, a current density of 0.8 A cm−2 is archived at 1.8 V with high OER selectivity and long-term stability for over 200 h, which surpasses the benchmarking platinum-group-metals-free electrolyzers.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.202101425
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Harvesting Hydrogen from Seawater Would Give Us an Abundant Sustainable Energy Option
By lenrosen4 -August 17, 20210
https://www.21stcentech.com/harvesting-hydrogen-seawater-give-abundant-sustainable-energy-option/
Yang Yang has been working on developing hydrogen extraction from seawater technologies for more than a decade. Image credit: University of Central Florida
A University of Central Florida (UCF)research team has invented a nanoscale material that can split seawater into oxygen and hydrogen using electrolysis. Their invention was recently described in a paper entitled, Dual-Doping and Synergism toward High-Performance Seawater Electrolysis appearing in the July 8, 2021 issue of the journal Advanced Materials. Prior to this discovery, seawater electrolysis was problematic, and expensive using platinum-group-metals-based filtering technologies.
The UCF researchers developed an alternative made from iron with phosphor dual-doped nickel selenide nanoporous film that in initial testing has demonstrated stability and long-duration capability which may prove to be an energy industry gamechanger.
In a July announcement from the University, Yang Yang, Associate Professor in the NanoScience Technology Center is quoted as stating, “This development will open a new window for efficiently producing clean hydrogen fuel from seawater.” He continues, “The seawater electrolysis performance achieved by the dual-doped film far surpasses those of the most recently reported, state-of-the-art electrolysis catalysts and meets the demanding requirements needed for practical application.” In a 200-hour test of the film, it held up producing hydrogen from seawater continuously. The film is not expensive to produce and is scalable for industrial applications.
The hydrogen produced using this nanofilm is classified as green. Electrolysis is the preferred route to go in producing hydrogen because there are zero emissions if the energy source is not fossil-fuel-based. That’s why the green hydrogen classification, as opposed to blue and grey hydrogen, is preferred.
If unfamiliar with these classifications of hydrogen fuels, blue hydrogen gets produced from fossil fuels when the resulting carbon emissions are captured and sequestered. Grey hydrogen produced from fossil fuels allows carbon emissions to get into the atmosphere. The fossil fuel industry, in its greenwashing efforts and to ensure continued profits from developing new fields to harvest, wants the public to buy into hydrogen produced from oil and gas.
In a world turning away from the burning of fossil fuels because of climate change, hydrogen from seawater would be a breakthrough of global significance. Hydrogen is ideal alternative energy for use in transportation, buildings, and homes where it can be used to recharge fuel cells or if compressed used for heating. Hydrogen, as opposed to natural gas, can be used by utilities in power plants as a backup or supplement to renewable energy generation from wind, solar, tidal and wave sources.
Yang’s research team’s expertise in advanced materials with application for use in renewable energy devices, environmental science, and smart electronics is focused on novel cutting-edge technologies that are much needed over this next decade in our fight to keep atmospheric warming from exceeding the 1.5-Celsius threshold established by the IPCC and Paris Climate Agreement and to stabilize the planet’s climate future.
No, I think that was his brother YING.
Hydrogen is only an energy storage system. It takes the same amount of energy (electrical) as you will get from burning the hydrogen, except there are efficiency losses on both sides of the equation. There ain’t no free lunch.
Electric cars.............
So, that’s what Yang says.
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