Nanotechnology

Producing hydrogen from seawater

Producing hydrogen from seawater
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Producing hydrogen from seawater
Credit score: ACS Nano (2022). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.2c03877

In her analysis on bone tissue engineering, Dr. Marta Cerruti has labored for years with graphene, a single sheet of carbon atoms with unbelievable properties—electrical conductivity and the power to assist large weight. Now, her quest to enhance its qualities has opened the door to a doable resolution to one of many challenges of manufacturing hydrogen from seawater.

Cerruti, a professor of supplies engineering at McGill College, defined that whereas graphene is structurally sound, “one sheet of atoms isn’t one thing you may simply work with.” In truth, piling the sheets up ends in, principally, pencil lead.

Looking for a strategy to make an easy-to-handle construction, Cerruti’s Ph.D. scholar Yiwen Chen mixed graphene with oxygen in a suspension with water to create decreased (GO), a porous, three-dimensional, electrically conductive . Cerruti instructed an additional modification, with GO flakes stacked on the pore partitions, “which allowed us to take advantage of one other fascinating property of GO—it creates a membrane that permits water by means of however no different molecules.”

When she canvassed her crew for strategies on how finest to check the brand new scaffold, Gabriele Capilli, a post-doctoral fellow in her lab, instructed seawater electrolysis, a course of just like others he labored on whereas doing his Ph.D. It seems the brand new GO “selective scaffold” has the potential to enhance the method of manufacturing hydrogen from the ocean. The crew’s findings have been printed just lately within the journal ACS Nano.

In standard electrolysis, in seawater penetrate the electrode and work together with the catalyst, creating hypochlorite ions, an undesirable byproduct that toxins the catalyst, Cerruti defined. Utilizing X-ray part distinction imaging on the Canadian Mild Supply on the College of Saskatchewan, Chen confirmed the GO scaffold had the appropriate construction, with closed GO pores enclosing cobalt oxide nanoparticles because the catalyst. “We noticed what we wished to see.” Electrochemical assessments carried out within the laboratory of collaborator Thomas Szkopek (, McGill) confirmed the scaffold labored as anticipated to dam undesirable ions.

“Folks have tried numerous issues to maintain chloride out however no person considered the concept that through the use of GO, the electrode itself, its complete structure, might stop the chloride oxidation that produces hypochlorites.”

The subsequent problem, she stated, can be scaling as much as mass produce the GO membrane. However when that’s solved, “there are many prospects. This may very well be used for different reactions the place you do not need interference from sure molecules. It’s going to all rely in your creativeness.”


A promising new method to rebuild bone tissue


Extra info:
Gabriele Capilli et al, Selective Catalytic Electro-Oxidation of Water with Cobalt Oxide in Ion Impermeable Diminished Graphene Oxide Porous Electrodes, ACS Nano (2022). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.2c03877

Quotation:
Producing hydrogen from seawater (2022, September 13)
retrieved 17 September 2022
from https://phys.org/information/2022-09-hydrogen-seawater.html

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