As a fuel, hydrogen has a critical role to play in driving the paradigm shift towards a green and sustainable economy.
Paving the way towards environment-friendly hydrogen fuel at a lower cost, an innovative hydrogen manufacturing route has been discovered by a team of researchers from IIT Bombay headed by C Subramaniam. The technology increases production three times and lowers the energy consumption.
As a fuel, hydrogen has a critical role to play in driving the paradigm shift towards a green and sustainable economy.
This was disclosed by the IIT Bombay’s Department of Science and Technology on Wednesday.
Electric-field driven breakdown of water is an attractive route for production of hydrogen due to the extremely low abundance of molecular hydrogen in the earth’s atmosphere.
In addition to having about three-fold higher calorific value compared to non-renewable energy sources such as coal and gasoline, the combustion of hydrogen to release energy produces water and is thus completely non-polluting.
Electric-field driven breakdown of water is an attractive route for production of hydrogen due to the extremely low abundance of molecular hydrogen in the earth’s atmosphere.
This is associated with a slow rate of hydrogen production as such electrolysis needs high energy input. Furthermore, the use of expensive platinum and iridium-based catalysts also discourages it for widespread commercialisation.
Therefore, the transition to “green-hydrogen-economy” demands approaches that lower the energy and material costs and simultaneously improve the hydrogen production rate, the statement added.
This route can be directly adopted in existing electrolysers without any change in design or mode of operation and one-time exposure of magnetic field for 10 minutes is enough to achieve the high rate of hydrogen production for over 45 minutes.