Researchers from the University of Adelaide, Australia have made a groundbreaking discovery in the production of green hydrogen. The team has split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100% efficiency through electrolysis, without the need for any pre-treatment processes like reverse osmosis desolation, purification, or alkalization.
The study, published in the journal Nature Energy, used a non-precious and cheap catalyst in a commercial electrolyzer, achieving performance close to that of platinum/iridium catalysts running in highly purified deionized water. The use of seawater as a feedstock could provide a practical solution for regions with long coastlines and abundant sunlight, where seawater is an almost infinite resource.
Lead researcher, Yao Zheng, says, “Our work provides a solution to directly utilize seawater without pre-treatment systems and alkali addition, which shows similar performance as that of existing metal-based mature pure water electrolyzer.” The team is working on scaling up the system for use in commercial processes such as hydrogen generation for fuel cells and ammonia synthesis.