Renewable energy, though necessary for a green world, is currently too expensive for many power hungry parts of the world to adopt. The high cost isn’t because of the energy generating infrastructure, but the high cost of the energy storage options, primarily batteries, which can store excess power for days when no power is being generated. Researchers at Rutgers now seem to have come up with a viable energy storage solution that can give renewable energy generation the much needed boost.
With a goal to create a cheap material that can separate water into hydrogen and oxygen using the least amount of electricity, the team came up with a black powder made using lithium, oxygen and cobalt that dramatically boosts the effectiveness of electric current in splitting water into its constituent atoms that are hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen can be stored in tanks and used to generate electricity via a hydrogen fuel cell when the demand of renewable energy is more than its supply.
Fuel cells, just like the primary renewable energy generating infrastructure don’t rely on any combustion of solid or liquid fuel and produce electricity efficiently and without polluting the environment. The research team believes that the recipe for the low cost catalyst can be sold to a private company that can further commercialize it.
Via: New Jersey