By: Franyi Sarmiento, Ph.D., Inspenet, May 16, 2022.
Hydrogen fuel cells are an environmentally friendly technology that converts hydrogen into electricity, with heat and water being the only by-products. This makes them an attractive green alternative to portable power. However, fuel cell technology has been limited by its high cost, using scarce and expensive materials such as platinum for the catalyst.
Now researchers at Imperial College London have developed a catalyst that uses only iron, carbon and nitrogen – cheap and readily available materials – for hydrogen fuel cells. It can replace the rare and expensive platinum, allowing for greater use of the technology. If used wisely, they are as effective as precious metal in running a fuel cell at high power.
Our cheaper catalyst design should make this a reality and enable the deployment of significantly more renewable energy systems using hydrogen as fuel, ultimately reducing greenhouse gas emissions and putting the world on a path to zero net emissions, explained Anthony Kucernak, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial.
To make it work, the Imperial team fabricated a catalyst in which all the iron was dispersed as individual atoms within an electrically conductive carbon matrix. Single-atom iron has different properties than bulk iron, where all the atoms are packed together, making it more reactive. This means that iron powers the necessary reaction in the fuel cell, acting as a good substitute for platinum.
Dr. Asad Mehmood, from the Department of Chemistry at the Imperial said: “We have developed a new approach to fabricate a series of single atom catalysts that offer the opportunity to enable a series of new chemical and electrochemical processes. Specifically, we have used a unique synthetic method, called transmetalation, to avoid the formation of iron clumps during the synthesis. This process should be beneficial to other scientists looking to prepare a similar type of catalyst.”
In laboratory tests, the researchers showed that a single-atom iron catalyst performs similarly to platinum-based catalysts in a real fuel cell system. The iron-based catalyst allows for cheaper fuel cells to be built which will significantly reduce the cost of fuel cell applications.
The team is now working on improving the stability of the catalyst so that it has the same durability and performance as platinum, and hopes to scale it up for use in commercial fuel cells.
Sources and Photo : https://ecoinventos.com/pila-combustible-hidrogeno-hierro/
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/235714/cheaper-hydrogen-fuel-cell-could-mean/
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