Novel Approach To Generating Hydrogen Gas

Recent research has shown that hydrogen could be generated from water using modified semiconductor material. A great article in Science Daily the potential for an easier, cheaper process for generating hydrogen gas via recent experiments conducted jointly between University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville. Using this modified material Solar energy was able to split water molecules to hydrogen and oxygen. This gallium nitrade antimony hybrid alloy is relatively inexpensive to produce making it a good contender for generating energy by splitting water molecules.

To generate the hydrogen the material is placed in water with sunlight and the reaction occurs. The chemical process breaks the bonds of the molecules and then the hydrogen can be captured from the container. Producing Hydrogen in this fashion would be ideal as hydrogen does no naturally occur in the earth’s atmosphere. It is typically generated using dirty fuel sources. This becomes important as hydrogen fuel cells have been touted a potential replacement for automobiles. If all that hydrogen needs to be generated from fossil fuels it will limit the true environmental savings.

Long term it could be a very neat self contained process. Imagine this alloy being used to generate hydrogen and being captured locally. Then transferred to a fuel cell and then generating electricity from there. The byproduct would be water which could them be placed back into the container with the alloy. A true closed loop system to produce electricity.