A team of engineering and materials scientists from China, Australia and the U.S. has developed a process for using sea water to produce hydrogen without having to first pretreat the water. In their paper published in the journal Nature Energy, the group describes their new process and how well it worked compared to other processes that involve pretreated water.
As climate change progresses, scientists around the world continue to look for replacements for fossil fuels. One promising replacement is hydrogen, which does not produce greenhouse gases when burned. Much of its promise is due to the fact that water is used as the base product, which is plentiful in the world's oceans. But producing hydrogen tends to be expensive.
The primary means for this process is electrolysis, in which electricity is used to break apart the hydrogen and oxygen that make up water molecules. One of the reasons the process is expensive is the need for pure water, which can involve deionization and desalinization and also the addition of materials such as alkalis. In this new effort, the research team found a way to carry out electrolysis on untreated sea water in a way that they claim is inexpensive.
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