Beans means hydrogen
Research describes the use of the humble soy bean to produce a cheap and efficient non-precious metal catalyst for sustainable hydrogen production.
A barrier to cheap hydrogen for energy is the high cost and low availability of the platinum catalyst used in the electrocatalytic production process. To overcome this, US scientists have produced a catalyst using the abundant transition metal molybdenum (~1500 times cheaper than platinum) and ground soy beans, that competes well with the platinum catalyst.
Previous research has shown molybdenum carbide (Mo2C) to be a good catalyst for hydrogen production, but it is unstable in strong acid, which is used during the process. The team sought to produce an efficient molybdenum catalyst using components from nature and worked with two high school students from New York to test different forms of biomass, especially those with high protein content. They found that high protein soybeans made the best catalyst when mixed with molybdenum, proposing that Mo2C and Mo2N formed from the protein act in synergy with one another – with the active but acid-unstable Mo2C being balanced by the corrosion resistant Mo2N.
The scientists demonstrated that the molybdenum-soy bean catalyst could be produced via a simple and cost-efficient synthesis and showed the catalyst to be highly durable in acidic solution over a long operation period.
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