NEW CATALYST MARKS MAJOR STEP IN THE MARCH TOWARD HYDROGEN FUEL
In the issue August 1, 2008 of Science, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge led by chemist Daniel Nocera reported on a new water-splitting catalyst that works under environmentally friendly conditions, not made from costly materials like platinum but from cobalt and phosphorus - fairly cheap and abundant elements. The new catalyst needs improvements before it can solve the world's energy problems, but several outside researchers say it's a crucial development.
"This is a great result," says John Turner, an electrochemist and water-splitting expert at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. Thomas Moore, a chemist at Arizona State University in Tempe, goes further. "It's a big-to-giant step" in the direction of powering industrial societies with renewable fuels, he says. "I'd say it's a breakthrough."
The catalyst isn't perfect, according to the developers. It still requires excess electricity to start the water-splitting reaction, energy that isn't recovered and stored in the fuel. And for now, the catalyst can accept only low levels of electrical current. Nocera says he's hopeful that both problems can be solved, and because the catalysts are so easy to make, he expects progress will be swift. Further work is also needed to reduce the cost of cathodes and to link the electrodes to solar cells to provide clean electricity. A final big push will be to see if the catalyst or others like it can operate in seawater. If so, future societies could use sunlight to generate hydrogen from seawater. It could be used as fuel to power vehicles, but also piped to large banks of fuel cells on shore that could convert it into electricity and fresh water.
