Researchers at the University of Central Florida say they have discovered a way to make hydrogen with no carbon dioxide emissions.
and carbon at room temperature using nothing but sunlight. As often happens in scientific projects, the discovery was largely accidental
Tetard adds, “And there was no oxygen.” They were stumped. “If we wanted to study that burning spot, it needed to be bigger.” Once they managed to produce a larger sample, they put it under the electron microscope. “We started seeing some lines, but it’s a loose, messy powder, so it shouldn’t be ordered. But when we zoomed in some more, we saw some carbon and lots of it, with the defect engineered boron nitride powder clinging to the top of it.
“Our process takes a greenhouse gas — methane — and converts it into something that’s not a greenhouse gas and two things that are valuable products, hydrogen and carbon,” Blair says. “And we’ve removed methane from the cycle.”The researchers say the technology for producing hydrogen was actually inspired by an earlier innovative method of theirs that makes carbon from defect engineered boron nitride using visible light. Defect engineering refers to creating irregularly structured materials.
The photo-chemical transformation technology lends itself to many applications, the researchers claim, including sensors or new components for nano-electronics, energy storage, quantum devices, and green hydrogen production. Market applications include possible large scale production of hydrogen in solar farms and the capture and conversion of methane.“That invention is actually a twofer,” Blair says. “You get green hydrogen, and you remove — not really sequester — methane.
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