Groundbreaking Affordable Catalyst for Extracting Clean Fuel from Water

A team spearheaded by the Argonne National Laboratory has developed a cost-effective, cobalt-based catalyst, which significantly enhances the efficiency of extracting hydrogen from water. This development marks a substantial stride towards achieving the U.S Department of Energy’s (DOE) target to decrease the cost of producing green hydrogen substantially.

This new catalyst offers a cost-effective solution for the production of environmentally sustainable hydrogen from water.

A bountiful source of clean energy resides right under our noses – hydrogen from water (H2O) using renewable energy. Scientists are actively seeking economical approaches to derive clean hydrogen from water with the intention to replace fossil fuels and combat global warming.

Hydrogen, besides producing nothing but water when used to power vehicles, has critical applications in various industrial processes. It is particularly crucial in steel and ammonia production. The incorporation of cleaner hydrogen in these industries could bring substantial benefits.

The team that pioneered this low-cost catalyst includes researchers from DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Giner Inc., and is led by the Argonne National Laboratory.

The process of producing hydrogen and oxygen from water through electrolysis is not new, as noted by Di-Jia Liu, senior chemist at Argonne, who also has an appointment at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. Proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers, a newer technology, can split water into hydrogen and oxygen more efficiently and at near room temperature. Their lower energy requirements make them ideal for generating clean hydrogen using intermittent renewable sources such as solar and wind.

In a PEM electrolyzer, separate catalysts are used for each electrode (cathode and anode). The cathode catalyst produces hydrogen, while the anode catalyst forms oxygen. The current anode catalyst uses iridium, which has a high market price of approximately $5,000 per ounce. The scarcity and high cost of iridium are substantial barriers to the widespread adoption of PEM electrolyzers.

Cobalt, the main component in the newly developed catalyst, is significantly cheaper than iridium. Liu explained that their aim was to develop a low-cost anode catalyst that generates hydrogen at a high throughput while consuming minimal energy. By utilizing the cobalt-based catalyst, they managed to overcome the primary cost barrier to producing clean hydrogen in electrolyzers.

Giner Inc., renowned for its work on the commercialization of electrolyzers and fuel cells, assessed the new catalyst under industrial conditions. The catalyst’s performance and durability surpassed those of competitors.

To further enhance the catalyst’s performance, understanding the reaction mechanism at the atomic level under electrolyzer operating conditions is critical. Using X-ray analyses, electron microscopy, and computational modeling, the team was able to uncover essential structural changes that occur under operating conditions and gain important insights into the catalyst’s durability.

This research accomplishment is a leap towards the DOE’s Hydrogen Energy Earthshot initiative. The ambitious objective of this initiative is to decrease the cost of green hydrogen production to one dollar per kilogram within a decade. This could transform the nation’s economy with potential applications spanning the electric grid, manufacturing, transportation, and residential and commercial heating.

Liu noted that their results pave a promising way forward to substitute expensive precious metal catalysts with significantly cheaper and more abundant elements.

The research was supported by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, and Argonne Laboratory Directed Research and Development funding.

Their findings were published on 11 May 2023, in Science under the title “La- and Mn-doped cobalt spinel oxygen evolution catalyst for proton exchange membrane electrolysis.”

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More about Cobalt-based catalyst

• Argonne National Laboratory
• U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydrogen Energy Earthshot Initiative
• Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolyzers
• Giner Inc
• DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories
• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Article in Science (Please note that the specific article link was not provided in the original text)