MAKING HYDROGEN WITH MINING WASTE

New catalyst promises cheaper hydrogen production.

A group of Queensland researchers have used mining waste to make a catalyst that could render hydrogen fuel production cheaper and more efficient.

Hydrogen gas can be made by electrolysing water, and the electrolysis process works best with expensive precious metals to catalyse it.

A paper published in Advanced Energy and

Sustainability Research utilises feldspars: aluminosilicate rocks which make up a large proportion of the Earth’s crust, and are coated with a few nanometres of nickel, cobalt or iron.

“Water splitting involves two chemical reactions – one with the hydrogen atom and one with the oxygen atom – to cause them to separate,” explains Queensland University of Technology’s Ziqi Sun, co-author on the paper.

“This new nano-coated material triggered the oxygen evolution reaction, which controls the overall efficiency of the whole water-splitting process.”