The cocktail of elements in seawater, including hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, and others, is essential for life on Earth. However, this intricate chemical makeup poses a challenge when attempting to separate hydrogen gas for sustainable energy applications.
Recently, a team of scientists from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, University of Oregon, and Manchester Metropolitan University has discovered a method to extract hydrogen from the ocean. They accomplish this by funneling seawater through a double-membrane system and electricity.
Their innovative design proved successful in generating hydrogen gas without producing large amounts of harmful byproducts. The results of their study, recently published in the journal Joule, could help advance efforts to produce low-carbon fuels.
“Many water-to-hydrogen systems today try to use a monolayer or single-layer membrane. Our study brought two layers together,” said Adam Nielander, an associate staff scientist with the SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, a SLAC-Stanford joint institute. “These membrane architectures allowed us to control the way ions in seawater moved in our experiment.”
Hydrogen gas is a low-carbon fuel currently used in many ways, such as to run fuel-cell electric vehicles and as a long-duration energy storage option – one that is suited to store energy for weeks, months, or longer – for electric grids.
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