Hydrogen has been sold to the public as having the potential to be the ultra-clean fuel for the future’s economy. What’s less likely to be mentioned is that 96% of hydrogen is produced from natural gas, coal or other fossil fuels – producing it using renewable electricity is simply too expensive. To realise hydrogen’s full potential, the world needs better means of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. Professor Kazunari Domen at the University of Tokyo/Shinshu University is performing research into how we can improve a method which generates hydrogen from only water and sunlight: photocatalysis.
Hydrogen has developed a name for itself as the ultra-clean fuel of the future. If you ran a car on hydrogen, only water would come out of its exhaust pipe.
But there’s a problem. About 96% of the world’s hydrogen is formed from fossil fuels, the majority of which is produced by the steam reforming of natural gas. Methane has its hydrogen atoms removed, forming hydrogen gas, and the atoms are replaced with oxygen – forming carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas. One tonne of hydrogen comes at the expense of creating 9 to 12 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
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