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A joint research team, affiliated with UNIST has introduced the Hybrid-Solid Electrolysis Cell (Hybrid-SOEC) system with highest reported electrochemical performance in hydrogen production. The proposed system has attracted much attention as a new promising option for the cost-effective and highly-efficient hydrogen production, as it shows excellent performance compared with other water-electrolysis systems.
This breakthrough has been led by Professor Guntae Kim in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST in collaboration with Professor Tak-Hyoung Lim of Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) and Professor Jeeyoung Shin of Sookmyung Women's University.
A solid oxide electrolyzer cell (SOEC) consists of two electrodes and an electrolyte that are all in solid-state. They are strongly desired as novel candidates for the hydrogen production, as they require no need to replenish lost electrolytes, while eliminating the corrosion problems. Besides, SOECs also operate at relatively high temperatures (700-1000 °C), which helps to offer reduced electrical energy consumption.
Professor Kim and his research team have been seeking ways to improve energy efficiency of hydrogen production, using SOEC. In the study, the research team has demonstrated the novel concept of Hybrid-SOEC based on the mixed ionic conducting electrolyte, allowing water electrolysis to be occurred at both hydrogen and air electrodes.
[...] The layered perovskite with excellent electrochemical properties was used as the electrode of Hybrid-SOEC. By adding an excellent electrode material on mixed ionic conducting electrolyte, resulting in enhanced electrochemical performance. As a result, the corresponding yields of hydrogen produced were 1.9 L per hour at a cell voltage of 1.5 V at 700 °C. This is four times higher hydrogen production efficiency than the existing high-efficient water electrolytic cells.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @08:20PM (1 child)
I agree with you. And the problems about a hydrogen based economy are not only related to production, which in itself is quite costly and will remain costly. Hydrogen is the simplest atomic structure element and the smallest, it is very difficult to contain and will leak out of containers that don't leak *anything else*. This means very high maintenance costs and very high precision in construction.
It is also highly reactive towards most other elements. It loves to combine and bind with the others at any time, under a lot of different conditions. And it enjoys doing that by exchanging non ignorable amounts of energy. Which can be a bit problematic for safety. Aka eating more $$$.
I found this quite long ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy [wikipedia.org]
It is very informative.
As I see it, hydrogen will definitely be used in a lot of situations. But upscaling it will always be problematic and there will always be cheaper and simpler alternatives to it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday December 27 2017, @08:34PM
If you absolutely need hydrogen, this might be portable enough that you could pour in a gallon of water and plug it into the mains and get a few liters an hour. Continuous production eliminates a lot of storage issues.
If you were looking for a general purpose fuel: forget it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.