Harry Cockburn Environment Correspondent
Generating “entirely renewable clean energy”, from which water would be the only waste product, is feasible — and scientists are “homing in” on the exact means of achieving it, according to new research.
A team from Trinity College Dublin is “fine-tuning” a means of using renewable electricity to split water molecules into their constituent atoms, to release energy-rich hydrogen, which they say could be stored and used in fuel cells.
The process is already possible, and can be done using wind or solar power to generate the electricity required to split the water molecules. But the idea is yet to take off in a big way, as the amount of energy required from these renewable resources to produce hydrogen remains very high.
However, the new research suggests instead of harnessing large amounts of renewable energy, the same result can be achieved through using a particular combination of other elements as catalysts which drive this reaction.
It is already known that elements such as ruthenium or iridium are highly effective catalysts which can split the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in water, but they are “prohibitively expensive” and too scarce to be used on an industrial scale.
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