Phys.org November 22, 2024 Liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC) materials play a crucial role in hydrogen storage capacity, reaction kinetics, reaction temperature, and reversibility. However, the development and optimization of LOHC materials is limited due to the use of mass-produced materials for bulk hydrogen logistics. Researchers in the Republic of Korea proposed a molecular engineering approach to overcome the limitations of commercial dibenzyltoluene (DBT)-based LOHC systems which have superior physical properties, low price, and low toxicity. They used a new chemical structure, benzyl-methylbenzyl-benzene (BMB) to overcome the limitations of slow reaction kinetics and analyzed the dehydrogenation/hydrogenation pathways. They proposed a […]
Tag Archives: Hydrogen
Enormous cache of rare earth elements hidden inside coal ash waste, study suggests
Phys.org November 19, 2024 The renewable energy industry is heavily reliant on rare earth elements. A team of researchers in the US (UT Austin, University of Kentucky, University of Wyoming, industry) estimated coal ash resources and potential for extraction of rare earth elements using data for the US. According to the data ~ 52 gigatons (Gt) of coal was produced in the US (1950–2021). Power plants account for most of the coal use. About 70% of coal ash was potentially accessible for rare earth element extraction (1985–2021) and was disposed in landfills and ponds with the remaining coal ash was used […]
New method paves the way for cost-effective and high-efficiency green hydrogen production
Phys.org August 13, 2024 Hydrogen production through anion-exchange membrane water electrolyzers (AEMWEs) offers cost advantages over proton-exchange membrane counterparts, mainly due to the good oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity of platinum-group-metal-free catalysts in alkaline environments. However, the electrochemical oxidation of ionomers at the OER catalyst interface can decrease the local electrode pH, which limits AEMWE performance. Various strategies at the single-cell-level have been explored to address this issue. An international team of researchers (South Korea, USA – Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of North Carolina, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) reviews the current understanding of electrochemical ionomer oxidation and strategies to […]
New metal-free porous framework materials may have potential for hydrogen storage
Phys.org May 22, 2024 The isoreticular principle, which allows families of structurally analogous frameworks to be built in a predictable strategies do not translate to other common crystalline solids, such as organic salts, in which the intermolecular ionic bonding is less directional. Researchers in the UK showed that chemical knowledge could be combined with computational crystal-structure prediction (CSP) to design porous organic ammonium halide salts that contain no metals. The nodes in the salt frameworks were tightly packed ionic clusters that directed the materials to crystallize in specific ways on the predicted lattice energy landscapes. The energy landscapes allowed them […]
New property of hydrogen predicted
Phys.org August 7, 2023 Recently it was predicted based on ab initio quantum Monte Carlo simulations that, in a uniform electron gas, the peak ω0 of the dynamic structure factor S(q,ω) exhibits an unusual nonmonotonic wave number dependence, where dω0/dq<0, at intermediate q, under strong coupling conditions. Researchers in Germany predicted that this nonmonotonic dispersion resembling the roton-type behavior known from superfluids should be observable in a dense, partially ionized hydrogen plasma. Based on a combination of path integral Monte Carlo simulations and linear response results for the density response function, they presented the approximate range of densities, temperatures and […]
Seawater split to produce ‘green’ hydrogen
Science Daily February 1, 2023 The use of vast amounts of high-purity water for hydrogen production may aggravate the shortage of freshwater resources. Seawater is abundant but must be desalinated before use in typical proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers. An international team of researchers (China, Australia, USA – Kent State University) has demonstrated direct electrolysis of real seawater that has not been alkalised nor acidified, achieving long-term stability exceeding 100 h at 500 mA cm−2 and similar performance to a typical PEM electrolyser operating in high-purity water. This was done by introducing a Lewis acid layer (for example, Cr2O3) on transition metal oxide catalysts […]
Revolutionary technique to generate hydrogen more efficiently from water
Phys.org October 27, 2022 Typically, electron transfer proceeds solely through either a metal redox chemistry or an oxygen redox chemistry without the concurrent occurrence of both metal and oxygen redox chemistries in the same electron transfer pathway. An international team of researchers (Singapore, USA – Brookhaven National Laboratory, China) has discovered an electron transfer mechanism that involves a switchable metal and oxygen redox chemistry in nickel-oxyhydroxide-based materials with light as the trigger. The proposed light-triggered coupled oxygen evolution mechanism requires the unit cell to undergo reversible geometric conversion between octahedron (NiO6) and square planar (NiO4) to achieve electronic states with […]