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Environment & Energy

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OKIsItJustMe

(21,767 posts)
Tue May 21, 2013, 04:49 PM May 2013

New Method for Producing Clean(er) Hydrogen (a cleaner fuel reformer) [View all]

http://today.duke.edu/2013/05/cleanhydrogen
[font face=Serif][font size=5]New Method for Producing Clean Hydrogen[/font]
[font size=4]Duke engineers devise new way to produce clean hydrogen[/font]

May 21, 2013

[font size=3]Durham, NC - Duke University engineers have developed a novel method for producing clean hydrogen, which could prove essential to weaning society off of fossil fuels and their environmental implications.

While hydrogen is ubiquitous in the environment, producing and collecting molecular hydrogen for transportation and industrial uses is expensive and complicated. Just as importantly, a byproduct of most current methods of producing hydrogen is carbon monoxide, which is toxic to humans and animals.

The Duke engineers, using a new catalytic approach, have shown in the laboratory that they can reduce carbon monoxide levels to nearly zero in the presence of hydrogen and the harmless byproducts of carbon dioxide and water. They also demonstrated that they could produce hydrogen by reforming fuel at much lower temperatures than conventional methods, which makes it a more practical option.

Catalysts are agents added to promote chemical reactions. In this case, the catalysts were nanoparticle combinations of gold and iron oxide (rust), but not in the traditional sense. Current methods depend on gold nanoparticles’ ability to drive the process as the sole catalyst, while the Duke researchers made both the iron oxide and the gold the focus of the catalytic process.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcat.2012.12.027

Yes, the good news is that they’re producing CO[font size="1"]2[/font]…
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