Water electrolysis is an easy way of producing hydrogen gas. While hydrogen is considered a clean, renewable fuel, efficient electrolysis requires high electric potential, high pH and in most cases, catalysts based on ruthenium and other expensive metals.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

As detailed in an article in The Journal of the American Chemical Society and reported on the university's website, Technion researchers have developed a unique system for producing hydrogen from water using little energy and inexpensive materials. Led by Professor Galia Maayan, head of the Biomimetic Chemistry Laboratory at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, along with doctoral student Guilin Ruan, this is the fastest system of its kind reported to date that uses available copper catalysts.

Maayan and Ruan designed and developed a system in which the catalyst is soluble in water. The system is based on three elements: copper ions; a peptide-like oligomer (small molecule) that binds the copper and maintains its stability; and a compound called borate whose function is to maintain the pH in a limited range.

The major innovation in this work is the researchers' discovery that the borate compound helps stabilize the metallic center and helps catalyze it.

Maayan explained that the inspiration for the new system came from enzymes (biological catalysts) that use the protein's peptide chain to stabilize the metallic center and by natural energetic processes such as photosynthesis, which are driven by units that use solar energy to transport electrons and protons.

The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Technion researchers discover cheap way to extract hydrogen fuel from H2O appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Solar energy plays an enormous role in our lives. If we can harness it, we can eliminate the need for polluting fossil fuels like petroleum and gas. But the main challenge in switching to solar energy lies in the varying availability of sunlight as the day progresses and seasons change.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Since the electrical grid needs stable power at all hours of the day and night, use of solar energy depends on our ability to store it. But the current technology for storing solar energy, batteries, is inapplicable to solar energy storage in the amounts need to supply a manufacturing site, a neighborhood, or an entire city.

Researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have made a scientific breakthrough on the storage of solar energy, as reported by Energy & Environmental Science. A project led by Professor Avner Rothschild of the Technion's Faculty of Materials Science doctoral student Yifat Piekner from the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP  has shown that hematite can serve as a promising material in converting solar energy into hydrogen.

The process entails the use of photoelectrochemical solar cells, which are similar to photovoltaic cells, but instead of producing electricity, they produce hydrogen using the electric power (current × voltage) generated in them. The power then uses sunlight energy to dissociate water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

Hydrogen is easy to store and when used as fuel, does not involve greenhouse gas or carbon emissions.

One of the main challenges of photoelectrochemical cells is the development of efficient and stable photoelectrodes in a base or acid electrolyte, which is the chemical environment in which water can be efficiently split into hydrogen and oxygen. This is where hematite-based photoelectrochemical cells come into play. Hematite is an iron oxide that has a similar chemical composition to rust. Hematite is inexpensive, stable and nontoxic, and has properties that are suitable for water splitting.

However, hematite also has its disadvantages. For reasons that are still unclear, the photon-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency in hematite-based devices is not even half of the theoretical limit for this material. The new Technion research builds on findings recently published in Nature Materials and proposes an explanation. It transpires that the photons absorbed by hematite produce localized electronic transitions that are "chained" to a specific atomic location in the hematite crystal, rendering them incapable of generating the electric current used for water splitting.

But a new analysis method developed by Piekner and her research colleagues, Dr. David Ellis of the Technion and Dr. Daniel Grave of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the following data were measured for the first time: Quantum efficiency in the generation of mobile (productive) and localized (nonproductive) electronic transitions in a material as a result of photon absorption at different wavelengths, and electron-hole separation efficiency.

This is the first time that these two properties (the first, optical in nature and the second, electrical) have been measured separately, allowing for deeper understanding of the factors that influence the energy efficiency of materials for converting solar energy into hydrogen or electricity.

The research study was sponsored by the Israel Science Foundation's research center for photocatalysts and photoelectrodes for hydrogen production in the Petroleum Alternatives for Transportation Program, the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP) and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI) at the Technion.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Technion researchers crack battery-free solar energy storage appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.