New formula for fast, abundant hydrogen production may help power fuel cells

The breakthrough suggests a better way of producing the hydrogen that propels rockets and energizes battery-like fuel cells. In a few decades, it could even help the world meet key energy needs—without carbon emissions contributing to the greenhouse effect and climate change.

It also has profound implications for the abundance and distribution of life, helping to explain the astonishingly widespread microbial communities that dine on hydrogen deep beneath the continents and seafloor.

Describing how to greatly speed up nature's process for producing hydrogen will be a highlight among many presentations by Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) experts at the American Geophysical Union's annual Fall Meeting in San Francisco Dec. 9 to 13.

The DCO is a global, 10-year international science collaboration unraveling the mysteries of Earth's inner workings—deep life, energy, chemistry, and fluid movements.

Muriel Andreani, Isabelle Daniel, and Marion Pollet-Villard of University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 discovered the quick recipe for producing hydrogen:

In a microscopic high-pressure cooker called a diamond anvil cell (within a tiny space about as wide as a pencil lead), combine ingredients: aluminum oxide, water, and the mineral olivine. Set at 200 to 300 degrees Celsius and 2 kilobars pressure—comparable to conditions found at twice the depth of the deepest ocean. Cook for 24 hours. And voilà.

Dr. Daniel, a DCO leader, explains that scientists have long known nature's way of producing hydrogen. When water meets the ubiquitous mineral olivine under pressure, the rock reacts with oxygen (O) atoms from the H2O, transforming olivine into another mineral, serpentine—characterized by a scaly, green-brown surface appearance like snake skin. Olivine is a common yellow to yellow-green mineral made of magnesium, iron, silicon, and oxygen.

The process also leaves hydrogen (H2) molecules divorced from their marriage with oxygen atoms in water.

From: http://phys.org/news/2013-12-formula-fast-abundant-hydrogen-production.html