Discoveries

A Catalyst for Clean Fuel

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Rutgers researchers have developed a technology that could overcome a major cost in making clean-burning hydrogen fuel, based on a new catalyst: carbon nanotubes, which are one-atom-thick sheets of carbon rolled into tubes 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.

Illustration Courtesy of Tewodros Asefa

Rutgers researchers have developed a technology that could overcome a major cost in making clean-burning hydrogen fuel—a fuel that could replace expensive and environmentally harmful fossil fuels. The new technology uses a new kind of catalyst, and it performs almost as well as the cost-prohibitive platinum that is used in so-called electrolysis reactions. Electrolysis reactions use electric currents to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The Rutgers technology is also far more efficient than less-expensive catalysts investigated thus far.

“Hydrogen has long been expected to play a vital role in our future energy landscapes by mitigating, if not completely eliminating, our reliance on fossil fuels,” says Tewodros Asefa, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at the School of Arts and Sciences and an associate professor of chemical and biochemical engineering in the School of Engineering. “We have developed a sustainable chemical catalyst that can, with the right industry partner, bring this vision to life, we hope.”

He and his colleagues based their new catalyst on carbon nanotubes—one-atom-thick sheets of carbon rolled into tubes 10,000 times thinner than a human hair. These tiny carbon tubes conduct electricity, bringing electrons close to the water molecules that need to be split. The tubes, thanks to a few nitrogen atoms embedded inside, also give water molecules the boost they need to break into two parts—hydrogen and oxygen ions—and subsequently grab electrons to form hydrogen and oxygen.

Finding ways to make electrolysis reactions commercially viable is important because the processes that make hydrogen today use methane, itself a fossil fuel. Electrolysis, however, could produce hydrogen by using electricity that is generated by renewable sources, such as solar, wind, and hydro energy, or by carbon-neutral sources, such as nuclear energy. And even if fossil fuels were used for electrolysis, the higher efficiency and better emissions controls of large power plants could give hydrogen fuel cells an advantage over less-efficient and more-polluting gasoline and diesel engines.