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You don’t have to be a scientists to know how to turn water into hydrogen and oxygen, we all heard about electrolysis. However, this process can’t help up get hydrogen fuel therefore we need a way to produce hydrogen fuel using sunlight, water, and probably the most important ingredient, a very efficient catalyst.
In time, scientists tried to use many metal-based catalysts, polymer materials, or other synthetic polymer materials, but the former are expensive, the second are inefficient, and the latter only work in the ultraviolet region of the solar spectrum.
Now, a team of scientists from the Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, and Fouzhou University in Fouzhou, China are claiming that they have developed a polymer material that could is perfect as a catalyst because it’s abundant in nature, easy to get and to work with, and non-toxic.
“The search for a suitable semiconductor material to use as a catalyst in this process has been a main goal of materials-science research. In addition to being a plentiful, versatile, and safe material, the catalyst should also be stable when in contact with water and able to absorb visible light. The material we chose fits these requirements,” said chemist Xinchen Wang who works with both Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, and Fouzhou University.
The ideal catalyst that the scientists are talking about is called carbon nitride and in order to test it, they polymerized it into molecule chains, then they used a heating-condensation process to rearrange the chains in layered sheets, a structure which resembles graphite. After the molecules formed these structured sheets, the scientists powdered the carbon nitride, and added a reagent material to water which was meant to donate electrons to the catalysis reaction.
After all of this, the mixture was ready so the scientists exposed it to sunlight. The result? Well, the water was split into positive hydrogen ions and oxygen atoms, then the carbon atoms of the catalyst provided “locations” for the hydrogen ions in order to reduce it to H2.
“Our result opens new pathways for the search of energy production schemes, using polymeric organic semiconductor structures that are cheap, stable, and commonly available,” said Wang.
Although you can’t say that we have hydrogen fuel, it’s a promising start and it shows that the carbon nitride polymer can be used to absorb visible light and that it’s very efficient. For the moment, the entire process is unreliable because the H2 production varies from reaction to reaction. Hopefully, the scientists will overcome all problems and in a few years we will have cheap hydrogen fuel to power our cars.
H2, which is one product of electrolysis, IS “hydrogen fuel”. The first paragraph of this post doesn’t make sense.
>You don’t have to be a scientists to know how to turn water into hydrogen and >oxygen, we all heard about electrolysis. However, this process can’t help up get >hydrogen fuel therefore we need a way to produce hydrogen fuel using sunlight, >water, and probably the most important ingredient, a very efficient catalyst.
If the goal is to create hydrogen from sunlight, water, and a “catalyst”, then why not use solar panels?
Ultimately the problem with hydrogen is that it’s much more efficient to use electricity directly to do work (in conjunction with a battery where portability is needed), than it is to use it to electrolyze hydrogen and run it through a combustion chamber or a fuel cell.
Richard
[...] Lastly, is a story on a new discovery that may one day turn sunlight + water into energy! Kind of cool. [From Scientists Use A New Catalyst To Generate Hydrogen From Sunlight And Water | Device Daily [...]
Actually, I’m wrong.
“If the goal is to create hydrogen from sunlight, water, and a “catalystâ€, then why not use solar panels?”
Because doing it in one step is more efficient. Converting to electricity first will lose some efficiency.
Even if you don’t lose efficiency, you’d be limited to the efficiency of the solar panel. This is a single device that have far more output than a solar panel hooked up to a seperate electrolysis device.
It might even never become useful as a device to generate hydrogen for fuel but it could lead to something even better. It’s called serendipity.
i think we need to speed up the process i theink the sooner the better for the people wih allergey problem with the air.
I think the creation of these solar cars is a brilliant idea, only are they going to be affordable to the middle and lower class society?
[...] via Device Daily [...]
[...] Scientists Use A New Catalyst To Generate Hydrogen From Sunlight And Water | Device Daily. [...]
[...] Scientists use a new catalyst to generate hydrogen from sunlight and water [...]
You mean to say, that if you succeed, a company will soon sell a solar cell, I put on my roof, supply with water, and get relatively free H2 and O2 gazes, which I can store, heat, light and burn in my small electric car or bike? If I live in a super insulated solar shelter, and have a greenhouse, garden, composting and humanure gas plant nearby in the neighborhood, can I live cost free, off grid in hard times? Is there a better way for more of us to live on this planet than the “American Dream’ nonsense? Will your process require above freezing temperatures to work? Will there be a rush for land with soil and suitable sun exposure for such applications? Can I use your panels to shade my aquaculture tanks,? Roof my chicken coops? Cheap H2 is all humanity needs for a better life for all! Thank you for working so hard on this.