MIT, Aussie Boffins Produce Cheaper Hydrogen
In last night's Fast Forward Radio discussion of future vehicular fuel sources I tossed out a couple of bits of recent research that might make Hydrogen a bit more of an option in the intermediate future.
It seems that considerable advances have been made in the last few months in terms of generating Hydrogen from sources other than fossil fuels.
My claim of "near 100% efficiency" comes from this EETimes piece (via Instapundit and ChicagoBoyz) describing MIT research using a liquid Cobalt Phosphate catalyst to do the job.
"[W]ith our catalyst almost 100 percent of the current used for electrolysis goes into making oxygen and hydrogen."-- Daniel Nocera, MIT Chemistry Professor.
Meanwhile, in Australia, Monash University scientists have succeeded in producing Hydrogen (and Oxygen) gas directly from sunlight and water, using a slightly charged (1.2V) Nafion (wikipedia) substrate doped with Manganese "clusters". See this recent Gizmag piece (Artificial Photosynthesis provides clean, cheap Hydrogen) for additional details.
