Breakthrough in hydrogen fuel production could revolutionize alternative energy market. BLACKSBURG, Va., April 4, 2013 – A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered a way to extract large quantities of hydrogen from any plant, a breakthrough that has the potential to bring a low-cost, environmentally friendly fuel source to the world. “Our new process could help end our dependence on fossil fuels,” said Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering. “Hydrogen is one of the most important biofuels of the future.” Zhang and his team have succeeded in using xylose, the most abundant simple plant sugar, to produce a large quantity of hydrogen that previously was attainable only in theory. Zhang’s method can be performed using any source of biomass. The discovery is a featured editor’s choice in an online version of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, International Edition.
The U.S. Jonathan R. Nanoparticles Produce Renewable Hydrogen from Wastewater and Sunlight. © HyperSolarRecent breakthroughs in the development of a renewable hydrogen technology will allow the use of almost any source of water to produce renewable (and carbon-free) hydrogen fuel. Producing hydrogen with a conventional electrolysis system uses electricity to separate hydrogen and oxygen from water molecules, but one big drawback to this method is the need for highly purified water as a source.
But a new technology from HyperSolar eliminates this need, as it claims its nanotechnology can use "any source of water, including seawater and wastewater" to produce hydrogen, which would significantly reduce both the number of steps in the process, as well as the cost involved. HyperSolar's new technology uses a low-cost polymer coating and a small-scale solar device together to make a self-contained particle that can separate hydrogen from any water, using just the Sun's energy.
High-Yield Production of Dihydrogen from Xylose by Using a Synthetic Enzyme Cascade in a Cell-Free System - Martín del Campo - 2013 - Angewandte Chemie International Edition. HYDROGEN FREE ENERGY OFF THE GRID HOUSE SOLAR POWERED 2/2. Inexpensive catalyst for producing hydrogen under real-world conditions found. Researchers have found an inexpensive and efficient catalyst that can produce hydrogen for fuel cells at room temperature (Photo: Fezile Lakadamyali) Hydrogen has been hailed as the fuel of the future, but producing it cleanly using platinum as a catalyst is simply too costly to service the world's energy needs.
On the flipside, producing hydrogen with fossil fuels not only releases CO2 as a byproduct, but is unsustainable, negating hydrogen's green potential. However, hydrogen may yet make good on its promise thanks to a group of scientists at the University of Cambridge. They found that cobalt can function as an efficient catalyst at room temperature in pH neutral water surrounded by oxygen. Compared to platinum, cobalt is relatively abundant and therefore inexpensive – a recipe that could make all the difference if we're going to complete a transition to alternative energy sources over the next 50 years. However, cobalt is not a magic bullet. Source: University of Cambridge. Computer model indicates promising new catalyst for generating hydrogen from water. Research conducted at Princeton and Rutgers Universities offers hope of synthetic catalysts that could produce hydrogen from water (Photo: Shutterstock) Hydrogen is often hailed as a promising environmentally-friendly fuel source, but it is also relatively expensive to produce.
However, new research conducted at Princeton University and Rutgers University poses the opportunity to produce hydrogen from water at a lower cost and more efficiently than previously thought possible. The research, led by Princeton chemistry professor Annabella Selloni, takes its inspiration from nature – or more specifically, a bacterium that produces hydrogen from water by using enzymes known as di-iron hydrogenases. Selloni and her fellow scientists made use of a computer model to work out how they could incorporate this function of the enzymes into practical synthetic catalysts, in order to enable humans to produce hydrogen from water.
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