Researchers have successfully split seawater without pre-treatment to produce green hydrogen.

[multigraincracker]

The team published their research in the journal Nature Energy.


https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/02/230201084357.htm

The international team was led by the University of Adelaide's Professor Shizhang Qiao and Associate Professor Yao Zheng from the School of Chemical Engineering.

"We have split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100 per cent efficiency, to produce green hydrogen by electrolysis, using a non-precious and cheap catalyst in a commercial electrolyser," said Professor Qiao.

A typical non-precious catalyst is cobalt oxide with chromium oxide on its surface.

"We used seawater as a feedstock without the need for any pre-treatment processes like reverse osmosis desolation, purification, or alkalisation," said Associate Professor Zheng.

"The performance of a commercial electrolyser with our catalysts running in seawater is close to the performance of platinum/iridium catalysts running in a feedstock of highly purified deionised water.

[Wounded Bear]

1. That's big stuff...

If they can convert raw seawater into H2 and O2 using solar power, it could help a lot.

[NNadir]

3. I saw the original paper a short while ago.

Calling electrolysis "green" is a nonsense statement,, albeit one frequently heard, and frankly a disturbing lie mindlessly embraced by a credulous public.

Electricity is not "green" but all the idiotic and disgusting photographs of vast land areas being obscenely covered with industrial unreliable wind and solar junk has led to mass delusion that it is.

The fraction of electricity being generated by the combustion of dangerous fossil fuels with the waste being dumped directly into the planetary atmosphere is rising, not falling.

In this case, as in many others, marketing has led to disavowed reality.

Anyone talking about "green hydrogen" is simply spreading dishonest marketing of the type being spread to defeat real action on climate. The coal, oil and gas companies are all laughing on the way to the bank.

[multigraincracker]

4. Would this be more acceptable

if the word "green" was removed from the study?

[NNadir]

5. Sure. This said, there's nothing very remarkable about...

...electrolysis.

If one enters the words electrolysis and seawater into Google Scholar, one gets over 40,000 hits.

I have been impressed by a few of the papers, notably the work of Dr. Heather Wilauer, using selective ion membranes to electrolytically obtain hydrogen and carbon dioxide from seawater simultaneously for use in FT synthesis.

In a wise future I see electricity as a side product of other industrial heat driven processes and in cases where excess electricity is available beyond grid demand, such a process might be worth pursuing.

Until electricity is "green" electrolysis isn't. Regrettably humanity is pursuing fantasies that don't work very well to pretend that electricity already is green. It's tragic, but thankfully there are people who have embraced reality. They may not triumph, but they exist.

[multigraincracker]

6. The great thing about science is

that as new information is found there can be a paradigm shift in what is accepted.
If that was not to happen, it becomes religion rather than science.

[masmdu]

7. How about "Red" Hydrogen as in Japan

&t=29s

[NNadir]

8. I posted in this space a reference delineating all the "colors"...

...associated with this interminal hydrogen nonsense a while back. I'm on a cell phone right now, and it is thus not possible to provide a link, but it's in my journal.

Hydrogen in general is a thermodyamic shell game. It is not, and never will be a source of primary energy on this planet unless fusion reactors are developed, in which case the demand for hydrogen fuel will be nearly vanishingly small. I do not expect that a practical fusion reactor providing exergy will appear for decades, if then.

Thus they will already be "too late" because "too late" is here and now. The climate disaster is upon us.

Making hydrogen from clean and sustainable electricity, of which there is only one kind, nuclear electricity, wastes clean and sustainable electricity for no good reason.

I often compare hydrogen fantasies to the game of three card Monte, which is played by skillful hucksters to fleece willing marks. There is no way to win; there are only ways to lose.

Until all the world's electrical power is provided by clean primary energy, which is nowhere near true - things are getting worse, not better - these hydrogen fantasies are simply destructive nonsense thinking.

No government can repeal the second law of thermodynamics. That's a fact. Facts matter.