The cars of the future could run on hydrogen, but there are multiple ways to get it.
The hydrogen car is one of the most coveted dreams today. It allows us to move efficiently and without generating particularly serious greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, almost all automotive brands are working hard to achieve the first functional hydrogen engines. However, this leads to new problems that are just as important. There is no point in manufacturing hydrogen cars if obtaining it is very polluting, which is why there are many scientific teams trying to make green hydrogen much more sustainable and accessible to everyone. Now, one team seems to have achieved this quite successfully, bringing us remarkably close to the hydrogen car, or at least an affordable and clean energy source for it.
A perfect breakthrough for the future of automotive
A scientific team from the University of Nottingham and other institutions has published a paper in the Journals of Material Chemistry A explaining a method in which they can convert metal waste into a catalyst that produces hydrogen from water, so that dependence on fossil fuels and precious metals such as platinum that are usually very expensive could be massively reduced.
Dr. Jesum Alves Fernandes, one of the directors of the research, had the idea of using this metal waste to be applied in the production of hydrogen, thus saving large sums of money in the process of creating this gas that could be used to power the cars of the future. It is a sustainable method and also economically much more efficient than any other current method, since the use of very scarce metals made the production of hydrogen very expensive.
For years, the achievement of green hydrogen together with red hydrogen has been the main concerns when it comes to obtaining this gas in massive quantities. Because in the past it was either very expensive or very polluting, and the idea was precisely to replace it with fossil fuels so that it would stop producing a significant footprint in our atmosphere. Thus, they have discovered that these metal residues can serve as a perfect catalyst for the electrolysis of water.
These metallic residues may have served as a catalyst because, although they were apparently smooth, the truth is that they had grooves and ridges just a few nanometers wide. By depositing platinum atoms in them, they were able to make them assemble and allow electrolysis. Of course, it does not totally dispense with platinum, but its use is almost residual since they used 28 micrograms of platinum to produce half a liter of hydrogen per minute with a single piece of waste.
Breaking this barrier when it comes to achieving a profitable and environmentally friendly business, researchers have achieved a milestone that can be used so that in the future human beings can enjoy hydrogen engines in our vehicles, being able to refuel them at an affordable price and without the major problems that currently existed.
SOURCE: La vanguardia
Original Article in Spanish: Logran la obtención de hidrógeno verde asequible y no-contaminante. Nos acerca al coche de hidrógeno (lavanguardia.com)
Read the most up to date Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Industry news at FuelCellsWorks
