🚗 Researchers omit platinum to create affordable hydrogen fuel cells

Due to environmental concerns, legislation, and rising energy prices, we're seeing ever-increasing sales of non-fossil powered vehicles, particularly electric vehicles in particular. Too many, however, green cars remain out of reach due to price.

But prices are dropping and will soon reach below that of a comparable internal combustion engine, ICE, car.

💡 Optimist’s Edge: This is when electric cars will be cheaper than petrol cars

72 percent are completely wrong about when electric cars will be cheaper to buy than petrol cars, and out of those half think that it will NEVER happen. Electric vehicles will overtake petrol cars when the cost of the battery makes them cheaper to buy. We reveal when this will happen.

Warp NewsMathias Sundin

Another method for storing electricity is hydrogen fuel cells. Like internal combustion engine powertrains, a hydrogen engine can quickly be refueled, yet the only emissions are water and the fuel is abundant.

The caveat is, however, that to facilitate the process to produce electricity, a catalyst is required and the catalyst currently used is platinum. A European team led by researchers from the Imperial College of London seems to have found an important part of the answer.

“Currently, around 60% of the cost of a single fuel cell is the platinum for the catalyst. To make fuel cells a real viable alternative to fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, for example, we need to bring that cost down", says lead researcher Professor Anthony Kucernak.

What they've done is that they've substituted platinum with iron. Their method involves dispersing single iron atoms within an electrically conducting carbon matrix, a method that in lab tests has proven to compare favorably to current technology.

"Specifically, we used a unique synthetic method, called transmetallation, to avoid forming iron clusters during synthesis. This process should be beneficial to other scientists looking to prepare a similar type of catalyst”, says first author Dr. Asad Mehmood.

The discovery has potential for other uses as well. For example, it could be possible to use this method to substitute expensive and potentially hazardous chemicals with oxygen. This could benefit, for example, water purification.

☀ Wind and solar power break records

We now get more of our electricity in the world from sun and wind than ever before and we have a good chance of expanding enough renewable electricity to meet the 1.5-degree target.

Warp NewsKent Olofsson