Recipe for ‘fully renewable energy’ from water is approaching reality

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The production of “completely renewable clean energy,” of which water would be the only waste product, is doable – and scientists are “targeting” the exact means to do this, according to new research.

A team from Trinity College Dublin is “refining” a means of using renewable electricity to break down water molecules into their constituent parts to release high-energy hydrogen, which they believe could be stored and used in fuel cells.

The process is already possible and can be done using wind or solar energy to generate the electricity needed to split the water molecules. But the idea is still to come, because the energy demand from these renewable raw materials for hydrogen production is still very high.

However, the new research suggests that instead of using large amounts of renewable energy, the same result can be achieved by using a certain combination of other elements as catalysts that drive this reaction.

It is already known that elements such as ruthenium or iridium are highly effective catalysts that can split the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in water, but they are “prohibitively expensive” and too scarce for large-scale use.

Instead, scientists turned to powerful computational methods and advanced quantum chemical modeling to develop combinations of metals that could drive the necessary reaction.

Quantum chemistry is the application of quantum mechanics to chemical systems where understanding electronic structures and molecular dynamics is crucial.

So far, the work has identified nine combinations of metals and ligands (which glue them together) commonly found on Earth as “promising traces for experimental investigation”.

Three metals stand out, the research team said. Chromium, manganese and iron are considered to be particularly promising candidates.

“Thousands of catalysts based on these key components can now be placed in a crucible and examined for their capabilities while the hunt for the magic combination continues,” the team said.

Dr. Max García-Melchor of Trinity College, lead author of the research, said, “Two years ago our work had made the hunt for the holy grail of catalysts a little more manageable. Now we’ve made another big leap forward.” by clearly narrowing down the search area and speeding up our search.

“Until recently, we were looking for a tiny needle in a huge haystack. After shrinking the haystack, we’ve now sucked up a lot of the rest of the hay. To make this clear, we screened 17 catalytic converters two years ago. Now we’ve screened 444 and believe it won’t be long before we have a database with 80,000 ‘screenable’ catalysts in it. “

He added, “How can we live sustainably? That is arguably the biggest and most pressing question facing society in the 21st century. I believe that researchers from all disciplines can help answer this, and we see a particular strength in our pursuit in our multidisciplinary approach. “

Michael Craig, a PhD student at Trinity, is the first author of the magazine article. He said, “It seems hopeful that science could provide the world with entirely renewable energy, and this latest work provides a theoretical basis for optimizing sustainable ways of storing that energy, and goes beyond that by identifying specific metals, that offer the greatest potential.

“Much research has focused on the effective but prohibitively expensive metals as potential candidates, even though these are far too rare to do the heavy lifting that is required to store enough hydrogen for society. We focus on finding a long-term, viable option. And we hope that we will. “

Scientists recently warned that the energy demand for hydrogen production could exceed the growth of renewable resources, meaning that hydrogen-hungry processes could create greater demand for fossil fuels in the short term if hydrogen demand booms.

The research is published in the journal Cell reports physical science.

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