Stanford scientists develop water splitter that runs on ordinary AAA battery

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Scientists from Stanford University have developed a cheap device that uses a AAA battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. This hydrogen gas from this device could be used to power fuel cells in zero-emissions vehicles.

In 2015, American consumers will finally be able to purchase fuel cell cars from Toyota and other manufacturers. Although touted as zero-emissions vehicles, most of the cars will run on hydrogen made from natural gas, a fossil fuel that contributes to global warming.

Now scientists at Stanford University have developed a low-cost, emissions-free device that uses an ordinary AAA battery to produce hydrogen by water electrolysis. The battery sends an electric current through two electrodes that split liquid water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Unlike other water splitters that use precious-metal catalysts, the electrodes in the Stanford device are made of inexpensive and abundant nickel and iron.

“Using nickel and iron, which are cheap materials, we were able to make the electrocatalysts active enough to split water at room temperature with a single 1.5-volt battery,” said Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford. “This is the first time anyone has used non-precious metal catalysts to split water at a voltage that low. It’s quite remarkable, because normally you need expensive metals, like platinum or iridium, to achieve that voltage.”

In addition to producing hydrogen, the novel water splitter could be used to make chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide, an important industrial chemical, according to Dai. He and his colleagues describe the new device in a study published in the Aug. 22 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

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1 Comment

  1. This is a very interesting development and I complement the scientists for their discovery. If I understand it correctly, and it is certainly possible that I don’t, the break-through is that they are able to get electrolysis at a lower voltage applied, which is nice and may make it easier to generate hydrogen using solar power.

    You aren’t, however, getting something for nothing, though, because the total energy required for electrolysis to take place would still be the same as for higher voltages. In other words, a AAA battery isn’t going to generate enough hydrogen to run your car at highway speeds for an hour.

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