A new emissions-free device created by scientists at Stanford University uses an ordinary 1.5-volt battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen at room temperature, potentially providing a low-cost method to power fuel cells in zero-emissions vehicles and buildings.

The water splitter is made from the relatively cheap and abundant metals nickel and iron. It works by sending an electric current from a single-cell AAA battery through two electrodes.

"This is the first time anyone has used non-precious metal catalysts to split water at a voltage that low," chemistry professor and lead researcher Hongjie Dai says. "It's quite remarkable, because normally you need expensive metals like platinum or iridium to achieve that voltage."

The technology has huge potential as a source for powering hydrogen fuel cells, long held as a likely successor to gasoline. Unlike gasoline combustion, which emits large quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, fuel cells combine stored hydrogen gas with oxygen from the air to produce electricity, leaving only water as a byproduct.

Fuel cell vehicles have been around since the 1960s, albeit mostly as research projects and demonstration cars and buses. But we may soon see them in commercial production, with Toyota and Honda both committed to selling fuel cell cars in 2015 and Hyundai already leasing fuel cell vehicles in Southern California.

Fuel cell vehicles have been widely criticized for their high cost, the lack of infrastructure around their fuel delivery, and their low energy efficiency after accounting for the effort it takes to produce compressed hydrogen (often involving large industrial plants that use an energy-intensive process that combines steam and natural gas).

But the new Stanford research, which latches onto a previously unknown method for splitting water, could help account for all these issues.

"It's been a constant pursuit for decades to make low-cost electrocatalysts with high activity and long durability," Dai explains. "When we found out that a nickel-based catalyst is as effective as platinum, it came as a complete surprise."

The nickel-metal/nickel-oxide catalyst, discovered by Stanford graduate student Ming Gong, also requires significantly lower voltages to split water when compared to pure nickel or pure nickel oxide. This new technique is not quite ready for commercial production, though.

"The electrodes are fairly stable, but they do slowly decay over time," Gong says. "The current device would probably run for days, but weeks or months would be preferable. That goal is achievable based on my most recent results."

The next step is to improve that decay rate and to test a version that runs on electricity produced by solar energy instead of the AAA battery.

The researchers believe that their water splitter could save hydrogen producers billions of dollars, and the electrolytic device could be used to make chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide as well as hydrogen fuel cells.

A paper published in the journal Nature Communications describes the research in more detail.

You can see Dai himself demonstrating the device in the video below.

Source: Stanford University

Comments:

So what! I this as a kid over fifty years ago--this must a stupid April Fool's joke. That electrolysis can be done is not the issue--you always have to put more energy into the system to isolate the hydrogen atoms than can be obtained from burning them. This is just. Dumb.

Doesn't anyone read the article anymore before commenting? This is nothing short of ground breaking. A clean way of splitting water, with almost no loss of energy and no need for precious metals, at a voltage of that of solar panels, so it doesn't require inverters. I am by no means an expert, but I think that's a significant breakthrough.

 

The actual news is that these Stanford researchers have discovered an economical electrode material which MAY be useful for large scale electrolysis production of hydrogen.

However, the principle barriers for hydrogen fuel cell use are hydrogen storage and distribution, not electrolysis electrode cost & efficiency.

In terms of energy efficiency, hydrogen produced by electrolysis requires more energy to produce than the hydrogen fuel yields. Efficiency is further lost during the fuel cell's conversion of hydrogen into electricity.

Unless the electricity powering the electrolysis is produced by "green" & "sustainable" means, the net effect on the environment is arguably worse than that of battery-powered cars recharged on the existing coal & gas fired power grid.

If these new electrodes can be scaled to industrial use, then this is a significant discovery. However, it is not a game changer because it doesn't solve the problems of "green" electricity for electrolysis and hydrogen storage & distribution.

 

This is SOOOOO cool.... We take electricity from a Duracell AAA.. we split water with it... we feed the gas into a fuel-cell and what do you know... we get electricity out the back of it... SUWEEEEEEEEET!

This technology would allow petrol stations to put solar cells on top of the forecourt, and produce hydrogen on site in a large enough quantity. So this would solve lots of problems.

First problem it would solve is transport of hydrogen. Second it would solve is the burden electric cars are placing on the electricty networks which are getting close to capacity. Third problem it would solve is waste products. You go from a lot of pollution to water and some decayed nickel.

It's pretty great break through. It means in the future you could potentially run your car from a solar panel at home, and sure energy from the sun is wasted, but its free energy that is wasted regardless of what you do anyway so its win win. Its not like we are polluting during the loss of energy in the conversion. For example burning 10grams of coal thats capable of producing 15 wats, and changing it into 5 wats of hydrogen, causing 10wats of pollution. We are taking the suns energy and witout pollution converting water into hydrogen in an efficient way. So although we want to keep the loss to a minimum, its not really relevant to the "green" discussion, as getting the loss lower just makes it greener.

Isaac Newton did not know what electricity is.

Einstein did not know what a fractal is.

Most readers do not know what the 18 different structures for water are.

Here is an article that will get the little grey cells agitated most effectively:

Hydrolysis by Fractal Implosion:

"Releasing Hydrogen from water- more efficiently-

using the new precise equation for the newly discovered accurate 'music' (wavelength and frequency harmonic series) of hydrogen."

http://www.fractalfield.com/hydrogen/

 

Fenshwey, efficiency does matter because it affects the viability of the energy system. Even with solar power systems, energy must be invested into the system.

This is the problem with hydrogen-powered energy systems or any other: Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI)

From "The Catch-22 of Energy Storage" by John Morgan (http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/):

"Several recent analyses of the inputs to our energy systems indicate that, against expectations, energy storage cannot solve the problem of intermittency of wind or solar power. Not for reasons of technical performance, cost, or storage capacity, but for something more intractable: there is not enough surplus energy left over after construction of the generators and the storage system to power our present civilization."

"The problem is analysed in an important paper by Weißbach et al. in terms of energy returned on energy invested, or EROEI – the ratio of the energy produced over the life of a power plant to the energy that was required to build it."

This well-referenced article goes on to state that our current level of civilization requires from its energy systems an EROEI of about 14:1.

EROEI indicates the viability of an energy system. It's OK to pilot and perfect a new energy system, but no system should go into production until it has a viable EROEI.

 

 

copyright © Gizmag 2003 - 2014

http://www.gizmag.com/water-splitter-aaa-battery-hydrogen-fuel-cell/33497/