Researchers at the Australian company Hysata have developed a method that will make it much more efficient to extract hydrogen using electrolysis, The Guardian reports.
Previous methods have at best had an efficiency of 75 percent, but the new method reaches as much as 95 percent.
The hope is to reduce the cost to around SEK 15 per kilo ($0.73 per lb) of hydrogen by 2025. That is about a quarter of today's cost and would make hydrogen very competitive as a fuel.
The new thing about Hysata's method is how the researchers succeeded to manage the resistance in the electrolytic cell. The higher the resistance, the more energy is converted into heat instead of hydrogen. Simply put, we can say that they have developed a new porous material that absorbs the electrolyte in a way that minimizes the "bubbling" that otherwise lowers the efficiency of the electrolysis.
"For hydrogen producers, this will be able to significantly reduce both their investment and operating costs", says Paul Barrett, CEO of Hysata, in a comment to The Guardian.
Christoffer Skageby
Kent Olofsson
