New Catalyst Is Better At Splitting Water Into Hydrogen And Oxygen (phys.org)

schwit1 shared an article from Phys.org: Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen to produce clean energy can be simplified with a single catalyst developed by scientists at Rice University and the University of Houston. The electrolytic film produced at Rice and tested at Houston is a three-layer structure of nickel, graphene and a compound of iron, manganese and phosphorus. The foamy nickel gives the film a large surface, the conductive graphene protects the nickel from degrading and the metal phosphide carries out the reaction... Rice chemist Kenton Whitmire and Houston electrical and computer engineer Jiming Bao and their labs developed the film to overcome barriers that usually make a catalyst good for producing either oxygen or hydrogen, but not both simultaneously... Whitmire said the material is scalable and should find use in industries that produce hydrogen and oxygen or by solar- and wind-powered facilities that can use electrocatalysis to store off-peak energy.
In a comment on the original submission, Slashdot reader Martin S. opines, "If we can crack H20 and C02 we could make fuel to run existing vehicles with existing infrastructure and that fuel could be carbon neutral by using off peak renewable energy from wind farms and solar."

Comments

Existing infrastructure?

[vadim_t]

Which is that?

Do current combustion motors run on hydrogen? Not really.

Are current cars able to contain hydrogen? Not really.

Are current tankers able to transport hydrogen gas? Not really, they're made for a liquid.

Are current gas stations able to dispense hydrogen? Nope, a station's storage, machinery and dispenser nozzle sure as hell aren't made for a gas.

So I'm not seeing much reuse potential here. Now the end-game would look kinda similar to a gasoline infrastructure on the surface, except for the part where you have to replace all the simple tanks and pumps with far trickier pressure vessels and regulators.