As the world is transitioning from a fossil fuel-based energy economy, many are betting on hydrogen to become the dominant energy currency. But producing"green" hydrogen without using fossil fuels is not yet possible on the scale we need because it requires iridium, a metal that is extremely rare.
The Biofunctional Catalyst Research Team at RIKEN CSRS is trying to get around the iridium bottleneck and find other ways of producing hydrogen at high rates for long periods of time. In the long run, they hope to develop new catalysts based on common earth metals, which will be highly sustainable. In fact, the team recently succeeded in stabilizing green hydrogen production at a relatively high level using a form of manganese oxide as a catalyst.
Nakamura believes that the level of hydrogen production achieved with the new catalyst has high potential for immediate usefulness."We expect our catalyst to be easily transferred to real-world applications," he says,"which will immediately increase the capacity of current PEM electrolyzers."