Researchers from the Supreme Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) participated in an international study published in the journal ‘Advanced Energy Materials’. obtained a compound capable of producing green hydrogen using ten times less iridium, a “very scarce and very expensive” transition metalAccording to CSIC.
Green hydrogen is hydrogen obtained by electrolysis of water using renewable energy. In this sense, he stated It is expected to “facilitate” the transition to a decarbonised society.
Specifically, to obtain this hydrogen, electrolyzers are needed, such as the so-called ‘PEM’ (Proton Exchange Membrane) electrolysers. “they work very well, they are efficient but they are very expensive for the materials they use”As explained by Sergio Rojas, a CSIC researcher at the Institute of Catalysis and Petroleum Chemistry (ICP) and one of the study’s authors.
In addition, one of these materials is CSIC. iridium is “not only expensive, but also one of the rarest and most widely distributed materials.”
In this sense, CSIC is currently one ounce (a unit of measure used in precious metals equivalent to 32.15 grams) is $4,600.According to the Johnson Matthey company.
How are the new things?
Like this, Researchers have designed a metal oxide, a compound (catalyst) that contains ten times less iridium than is used commercially. (they went from two milligrams per square centimeter to 0.2) and got the same performance.
“We reduced the catalyst cost tenfold”He pointed to the CSIC researcher at the Madrid Institute for Materials Science (ICMM), as well as the study’s author, José Antonio Alonso.
Likewise, he stressed that this work “shows the importance of basic research as a step before applied research.” “We got this compound ten years ago, but so far we haven’t found an application for it”explained.
María Retuerto, scientist at ICP and author of the study, added, for her part: this work “opens the door to other similar and scalable materials”.
He also explained that the scalability of this specific compound is “complicated” because it requires a furnace with an oxygen pressure of 200 bar, “a rare machine found at ICMM and used by Alonso.”
“These iridium materials start from a starting compound whose surface is modified in the reaction; What we’re seeing right now is that maybe we don’t need to have exactly this starting compound.. We could have something very similar and eventually the remodeling of the surface gives us an equal catalytic activity,” Retuerto said.
On the other hand, Rojas to produce several tons, that is, “massively”. However, he described this compound as “a catalyst precursor”, thanks to which other compounds are obtained.
Likewise, CSIC explained that the working process of this compound and its derivatives was described in another paper by the same teams. Nature Communication At the end of 2022, where they have already argued that it is possible to lower the iridium level of the catalysts used in ‘PEM’ electrolysis.
“Although alkaline electrolysis is the most advanced technique, PEM technology is very fast and can produce large quantities of high purity hydrogen. It currently needs iridium on its anode and that’s a big problem. introducing the technology to the market on a larger scale,” Retuerto said.
Reference work: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.202204169#
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