一组科学家成功地将天然海水在未经预处理的情况下分离产生绿色氢气
这个国际团队将通过使用更大的电解槽来扩大该系统的规模，以便将其用于燃料电池制氢和氨合成等商业过程
海水是一种几乎无限的资源，被认为是天然的原料电解液
中国石化新闻网讯 据油价网2023年2月12日报道，澳大利亚阿德莱德大学化学工程学院的乔世章（音译）教授和郑耀（音译）副教授领导了一个国际团队，成功地在没有预处理的情况下分离天然海水，产生绿色氢气。
乔教授说：“我们已经将天然海水以接近100%的效率分解成氧气和氢气，在商业电解槽中使用一种不昂贵和廉价的催化剂，通过电解产生绿色氢气。”
这个国际团队在《自然能源》杂志上发表了他们的研究成果。
一种典型的非贵重催化剂是在表面上有氧化铬的氧化钴。
郑副教授解释说：“我们使用天然海水作为原料，不需要任何预处理过程，如反渗析膜过滤、净化或碱化。我们的催化剂在天然海水中运行的商业电解槽的性能接近于铂/铱催化剂在高纯度去离子水中运行的性能。”
郑副教授补充说：“目前的电解槽是用高纯水电解液运行的。为了部分或全部取代化石燃料产生的能源，对氢气的需求不断增加，这将显著增加日益有限淡水资源的稀缺性。”
天然海水是一种几乎无限的资源，被认为是一种天然的原料电解液。这对于海岸线长、阳光充足的国家和地区更为实用。然而，这对于海水稀缺的国家和地区来说并不实际。
与纯水电解相比，海水电解仍处于早期发展阶段，因为面临电极副反应，以及使用海水的复杂性引起的腐蚀。
“对于传统的电解槽，包括脱盐和去离子，总是需要将不纯水处理到水纯度的水平，这增加了工艺的运行和维护成本。”郑副教授指出，“我们的工作提供了一种无需预处理系统和碱添加就能直接利用天然海水的解决方案，其性能与现有的金属基成熟纯水电解槽相似。”
阿德莱德大学国际团队将通过使用更大的电解槽来扩大该系统的规模，以便将其用于燃料电池制氢和氨合成等商业过程。
如果这项研究得到类似的成功复制，这将是一个突破。这项研究不涉及昂贵的贵金属。但钴虽然不那么稀有，通常是由人们采矿所得，但这种资源怎么说也不算丰富。这使得钴的未来在很大程度上有待评估。如果这项研究被证实，钴的需求将会飙升，变得更加昂贵。钴是可以得到的，只是被“邻避原则”和环保组织的“合法盾牌”所阻挡，所以相当严重地阻碍了这项金属的工业应用。
第二件事是还没有讨论电力的来源。虽然能源输入肯定是电力，并且声称接近100%的效率，但输入与产能的计算并没有显示或讨论。
然而，大幅降低水源成本的前景，加上不使用贵金属，引起了很多期待。希望接下来的步骤可以通过低成本解决，而不需要几十年的政治角力来完成。
李峻 编译自 油价网
原文如下：
Scientists Successfully Split Seawater To Produce Green Hydrogen
· A team of scientists have successfully split natural seawater without pre-treatment to produce green hydrogen.
· The team will work>· Seawater is an almost infinite resource and is considered a natural feedstock electrolyte.
University of Adelaide’s Professor Shizhang Qiao and Associate Professor Yao Zheng from the School of Chemical Engineering led an international team that successfully split seawater without pre-treatment to produce green hydrogen.
Professor Qiao said, “We have split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100 per cent efficiency, to produce green hydrogen by electrolysis, using a non-precious and cheap catalyst in a commercial electrolyser.”
The team published their research in the journal Nature Energy.
A typical non-precious catalyst is cobalt oxide with chromium oxide>Associate Professor Zheng explained, “We used seawater as a feedstock without the need for any pre-treatment processes like reverse osmosis desolation, purification, or alkalization. The performance of a commercial electrolyser with our catalysts running in seawater is close to the performance of platinum/iridium catalysts running in a feedstock of highly purified deionized water.
Professor Zheng added, “Current electrolysers are operated with highly purified water electrolyte. Increased demand for hydrogen to partially or totally replace energy generated by fossil fuels will significantly increase scarcity of increasingly limited freshwater resources.”
Seawater is an almost infinite resource and is considered a natural feedstock electrolyte. This is more practical for regions with long coastlines and abundant sunlight. However, it isn’t practical for regions where seawater is scarce.
Seawater electrolysis is still in early development compared with pure water electrolysis because of electrode side reactions, and corrosion arising from the complexities of using seawater.
“It is always necessary to treat impure water to a level of water purity for conventional electrolysers including desalination and deionization, which increases the operation and maintenance cost of the processes,” noted Zheng. “Our work provides a solution to directly utilize seawater without pre-treatment systems and alkali addition, which shows similar performance as that of existing metal-based mature pure water electrolyser.”
The team will work>Should this work get replication with similar success it will be a breakthrough. No expensive precious metals involved. But cobalt while not so rare isn’t abundant by any means and is often sourced from ore gathering by small children. That makes the future of cobalt very much up in the air for assessment. Should this research prove up, the cobalt demands would sky rocket and get way more expensive. There is cobalt to be had, its just buried under ‘not in my backyard’ and the environmental green groups’ lawyer barriers, which plug up the politics quite severely.
The second matter is that the power source isn’t discussed. While the energy input is definitely electric and the claim is near 100% efficiency, the input vs product calculation isn’t shown or discussed.
Yet the prospect of a greatly reduced water source cost, plus not using precious metals is cause for a lot of anticipation. Lets hope the next steps are solvable by low costs and not requiring decades of political maneuvering to get the jobs done.