Washington, Aug 22 (ANI): Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have created a new class of catalysts that might help overcome some of the hurdles inhibiting the production of hydrogen for use in fuel cells.

Argonne chemist Michael Krumpelt and his colleagues in the Chemical Engineering Division used "single-site" catalysts based on ceria or lanthanum chromite doped with either platinum or ruthenium to boost hydrogen production at lower temperatures during reforming.

"We've made significant progress in bringing the rate of reaction to where applications require it to be," said Krumpelt.

Most hydrogen produced industrially is created through steam reforming. In this process, a nickel-based catalyst is used to react natural gas with steam to produce pure hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

These nickel catalysts typically consist of metal grains tens of thousands of atoms in diameter that speckle the surface of metal oxide substrates.

Conversely, the new catalysts created by Krumpelt and his team consist of single atomic sites imbedded in an oxide matrix.

Since some reforming processes tend to clog much of the larger catalysts with carbon or sulfur byproducts, smaller catalysts process the fuel much more efficiently and can produce more hydrogen at lower temperatures.

Krumpelt's initial experiments with single-site catalysts used platinum in gadolinium-doped ceria, which started to reform hydrocarbons at temperatures as low as 450 degrees Celsius, but became unstable at higher temperatures.

However, ruthenium - which costs only one percent as much as platinum - in a perovskite matrix, was found to initiate reforming at 450 degrees Celsius and still have retain a good thermal stability.

Krumpelt said the use of the LaCrRuO3 perovskite offered an additional advantage over traditional catalysts.

While sulphur species in the fuel degraded the traditional nickel, and to a lesser extent even the single-site platinum catalysts, the crystalline structure of the perovskite lattice acted as a stable shell that protected the ruthenium catalyst from deactivation by sulphur, Krumpelt said.

Krumpelt will present the findings at the 234th national meeting of the American Chemical Society currently underway in Boston from August 18 to 23. (ANI)