Canberra, May 11th (Uni), in their recent studies on sustainable Eco-friendly energy, Australian researchers from the University of Adelaide have developed two innovative, energy-efficient systems that use urea from human urine and waste water to produce cheaper green hydrogen.
The systems offer a cheaper and sustainable alternative to conventional methods for generating clean hydrogen and make waste into a valuable energy resource, according to a press release from the university.
Hydrogen is typically generated by splitting water through electrolysis, a costly and energy -intensive process. While it is cheaper to extract hydrogen from fossil fuels, it is equipped with high carbon emissions, it said.
In contrast, the use of urea, especially from urine, requires 20 to 27 percent less electricity and avoids the environmental impact of traditional methods, said the Excellence Center of the Australian Research Council for Carbon Sciences and Innovation (Coe-CSI), chief researcher Zheng YAO.
The researcher's first system uses a new copper -based catalyst in a membrane -free setup to extract hydrogen from pure urea.
Your second system goes one step further by using urine as a slightly available and environmentally friendly alternative source. It uses a chlorine-mediated oxidation mechanism with a platinum-based catalyticator to tackle chloridions in the urine that can corrode the electrolyses system.
Both systems deal with a significant disadvantage of existing urea base approaches: They avoid producing toxic nitrate and nitrites and instead publishing harmless nitrogen gas, said the deputy director of the Coe-CSI and the chief searcher Qiao Shizhang.
The team under the direction of Zheng and Qiao, both from the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Adelaide, now aims to replace the costly platinum with non-priced, carbon-supported metal catalysts in order to further reduce the costs and to support sustainable hydrogen production. Uni ANV SSP