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A cheap, emissions-free device that uses a 1.5-volt AAA battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis has been developed by scientists at Stanford University ( http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/august/splitter-clean-fuel-082014.html ).
Unlike other water splitters that use precious-metal catalysts, the electrodes in the Stanford device are made of inexpensive, abundant nickel and iron.
“This is the first time anyone has used non-precious metal catalysts to split water at a voltage that low,” said Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford. “It’s quite remarkable, because normally you need expensive metals, like platinum or iridium, to achieve that voltage.”
http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-low-cost-water-splitter-that-runs-on-an-ordinary-aaa-battery
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140822/ncomms5695/full/ncomms5695.html
(Score: 1) by richtopia on Sunday August 24 2014, @07:04AM
The catalyst for splitting water is a huge field of research. An iron-nickel based solution has been sought out by many researchers, but typically the lifetime is minimal, while platinum catalysts will last for a long time. If they figured out a catalyst for this reaction that is cheap, that is HUGE. However, the article approaches it with the AAA battery - what a weird power source. If we are splitting water for energy storage, we are going to be doing it at large scale. Yes, 1.5 volts is relevant, but will this scale beyond a toy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 24 2014, @03:26PM
> However, the article approaches it with the AAA battery - what a weird power source.
Science news for dummies. I'm sure the actual authors of the paper are even more perplexed by that focus.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday August 24 2014, @09:32PM
Well, obviously for larger systems you'll need an AA battery. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.