Phys.org has a report regarding the use of molybdenum sulfide (MoS2) [sic - I think that should be molybdenum disulfide] as a catalyst when spliting water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen:
Hydrogen could be an important source of clean energy, and the cleanest way to produce hydrogen gas is to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. But the catalyst currently used to facilitate this water-splitting reaction is platinum. And that's a problem. When an electric current is run through water, it can split some of the water molecules. A catalyst lowers the amount of energy needed to split those molecules, and platinum is really, really good at this. But platinum is also really, really expensive – much too expensive for widespread use in hydrogen production.
So, researchers have long viewed molybdenum sulfide (MoS2) as a promising, much cheaper alternative to platinum. The drawback is that MoS2's catalytic performance is far worse than platinum's. To get around that problem, researchers have been trying to find ways to improve MoS2's catalytic performance. And now they may be on to something.
"The biggest stumbling block to improving MoS2's performance has been a lack of understanding of the connection between the material's performance and its composition and structure," says Linyou Cao, senior author of a new paper on the subject and a materials science and engineering researcher at NC State. "We're now able to shed some light on that connection."
In molybdenum sulfide, the ratio of sulfur atoms to molybdenum atoms can range from two to three. As a result, many researchers wondered if the precise composition of the material could affect its catalytic performance.
According to a new paper from Cao and his team, it doesn't. But the crystalline structure of the material does.
(Score: 1) by Aurean on Wednesday December 10 2014, @11:10PM
(Score: 1) by Aurean on Wednesday December 10 2014, @11:16PM
On second thoughts, it might just be the journalist (Matt Shipman) reading energy into the whole thing. I suppose there are other uses for hydrogen, which do not count on the splitting-then-using hydrogen process to have a net energy output.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Wednesday December 10 2014, @11:31PM
However Hydrogen as a *store* of power has a lot of potential. Batteries are extremely lossy.
If you have the energy (and plant) to separate the hydrogen, but you need it tomorrow, not today, then separating hydrogen and storing it for use later could be a good move. If you have the plant to store it and then use it later, when and where it is needed, it could be a better plan than a big battery - depending on all the messy details of course.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday December 11 2014, @12:18AM
If you have a base load plant that you can't throttle quickly, and/or intermittent peaks of wind power, inefficiently splitting H2O is better than dumping power into a resistive load. Not sure how it compares to pumped hydro storage, but you need to send your power towards some mountains for that...
(Score: 2) by zeigerpuppy on Thursday December 11 2014, @02:00AM
It gets even more interesting when you run the hydrogen over a catalytic bed together with nitrogen.
Ammonia is a great storage medium for hydrogen and there's an existing reticulation network.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Thursday December 11 2014, @07:07AM
<nitpick>Hydrogenium can be used for fusion and is therefore a huge storage of energy.</nitpick>
Seriously, as you already noticed the main benefit is probably the possibility to store and transport energy. There are some developed hydrogen vehicles [wikipedia.org]. Hydrogen vehicles can be electric vehicles using fuel cells or hydrogen-combustion vehicles. When combining fuel cells combined with an efficient way to use electric energy to split water, there could be some great applications to e.g. recover acceleration energy when slowing down the vehicle, or using solar energy to re-fill the hydrogen-tank when the car is parked.
On wikipedia is an article on a proposed hydrogen economy [wikipedia.org]. The idea sounds quite appealing to me; we have lots of green energy source, but usually problems to store/transport the energy to make it available when/where we need it. There are still some technical challenges, e.g. the compact storage of hydrogen in light and cheap containers, or - as mentioned by the article - a cheap catalyst to help splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Thursday December 11 2014, @08:06AM
I just noticed, how silly is sounds to mention refilling the tank as a special feature of hydrogen fuel-cells for electric cars. Of course this applies to battery powered electric cars as well, but it might be a difference compared to hydrogen-combustion driven cars (because fuel-cell driven electric cars might use the existing engine to work as an electric generator while combustion vehicles would need additional generators). And re-fueling the car might be faster with hydrogen compared to an electric plug.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 1) by MathCampbell on Friday December 12 2014, @05:09AM
Just a quick note ..
Hydrogen could be an important source of clean energy,
Hydrogen is NOT an energy source. It is an energy storage resource; there is not "free hydrogen" available to use; all hydrogen used for energy is being extracted from water, or from other compounds; this takes energy (more than is generated by burning hydrogen again), so in effect, hydrogen is an energy storage solution, NOT an energy source.
You need to put more energy into extracting the stuff than you do using it. So all it really is is an energy storage possibility so you can generate a lot of power, say in the desert, with solar panels, then transfer that energy by using it liberate hydrogen, put it into a car and recoup some of that solar energy when it's dark and you're doing 60...
Unless you're doing fusion I guess...