Finding Better Ways to Liberate Hydrogen for Clean Energy

Splitting water molecules to liberate the hydrogen and oxygen has been a scientific goal since hydrogen provides energy with no foul byproducts, notwithstanding the fact its behavior is a bit more capricious than other forms of energy as we saw with the Hindenburg.  Presto, it looks like there may be a better way.  (Science Daily:  Improved water splitting advances renewable energy conversion)

Previously the problem in obtaining hydrogen was the expense of the elements required to do it and the energy required was more than would be yielded by the result.  That was not working so well but the new science can do it with inexpensive components and much less electricity so the overall energy equation is greatly improved.

Energy conversion is a key to the clean energy economy.  Because solar and wind sources produce power only intermittently, there is a critical need for ways to store and save the electricity they create.

One of the most promising ideas for storing renewable energy is to use the excess electricity generated from renewables to split water into oxygen and hydrogen; the hydrogen can then be fed into fuel-cell vehicles.

"Hydrogen production by electrolysis of water is the greenest way to convert electricity to chemical fuel," said Junhua Song, a WSU Ph.D. student who synthesized the catalyst and performed most of the experimental work.

- Science Daily

In the presence of oxygen, when hydrogen burns it releases energy and the byproduct is only water.  There isn't anything greener than that except, regrettably, hydrogen has that pesky tendency to explode.  Management of it is vastly better than a century ago with the Hindenburg but there are attendant risks and it's always worthwhile to keep them in mind.

The Rock City Planning Commission is highly-interested in the technology because they bagged the nuclear reactor in favor of a tokamak (i.e fusion reactor) because it's cleaner but now they need to consider whether such facilities are necessary when conceivably we can pull the same energy from water through the use of an inexpensive catalyst and a small amount of electricity to drive the process.  The water is recovered when the hydrogen is burned so this looks much like a solution everyone can love.

The nuclear reactors are available right now;  the tokamak probably won't be in production in less than forty or fifty years, there's some lag time required before production level hydrogen liberation plants will be available.  Even with that lag, the hydrogen path may be the best one due to the build time required for the Rock City anyway.  In that context, the hydrogen solution is nearly ideal since there is almost no waste.

We have just described a perpetual motion machine when there is no cost to producing the energy but actually there is since there's still the overhead cost in driving it (i.e. the electricity required to spark it).  With this latest science, that overhead is greatly reduced and therefore the solution gets more attractive.