Hydrogen:  An Overview

Abstract

Providing an abundant, clean, and secure renewable energy source is one of the key technological challenges facing mankind. Resurgence in the chemistry and biochemistry of hydrogen, the world's simplest closed-shell molecule, has been spurred by recent scientific and technological interest in hydrogen as an energy carrier and potential transportation fuel. Our current energy infrastructure is dominated by fossil fuel use, which leads to greenhouse gas emissions. Hydrogen is potentially an ideal energy carrier, as it is nonpolluting and gives up both its electrons upon oxidation to form only water. Although it is the most abundant element in the universe, elemental hydrogen is not present in great quantities on earth. A number of key challenges must be overcome for hydrogen to be used broadly in a sustainable future energy infrastructure to solve the globe's energy problems. To accrue the full environmental benefit of hydrogen as an energy carrier, low-carbon intensive, low polluting, and lower cost processes for producing hydrogen from renewable energy sources need to be developed. Scientific advances are needed to develop more energy efficient and cost-effective methods for purification and delivery, to design higher energy density hydrogen storage systems, especially for vehicular on-board storage, and to enable more durable fuel cells for converting hydrogen into electrical energy. Governments and industries, particularly in the United States, Japan, and Europe, have been investing heavily in research and development to overcome the technical barriers for hydrogen production, storage, and utilization to enable a sustainable future energy infrastructure based on hydrogen.

Electrolysis of ammonia for hydrogen production catalyzed by Pt and Pt-Ir deposited on nickel foam

“…Hydrogen, as a promising energy carrier and the cleanest fuel source, is expected to play a significant role in reducing the dependency on fossil fuels [1]. The most promising application of hydrogen is to be fed into the automotive fuel cell for electricity generation.…”

“…The objective of this work is to evaluate the performance of noble metal electrocatalyst deposited on nickel foam substrates for alkaline ammonia electrolysis process. And the following tasks are involved: (1) to study the feasibility of nickel foam as electrode substrate, (2) to explore the electroplating of anode and cathode with different noble metal catalysts, (3) to investigate the competition of ammonia electrolysis and water electrolysis in the same alkaline solution, (4) to improve the energy consumption of the ammonia electrolyzer.…”

Bio-Inspired H2 Production Catalysts

“…In biology, the source of protons are generally water, thus it creates a carbon foot print free H 2 cycle [3]. Hydrogen is relatively weak base but it acidity increases after binding with metal [13], thus facilitates reversible heterolytic cleavage and generation of hydrogen. It is interesting to mention that Pt-based materials follow a homolytic process for H 2 production.…”

Hybrid Veil-Like Co(OH)2/rGO Nanocomposites Towards Electrochemical Hydrogen Storage Properties

“…[8][9][10] Therefore, highly efcient and convenient hydrogen storage materials and technologies have become challenges for today's development of a hydrogen economy. [11][12][13] Nowadays, many storage mediums have been established for hydrogen, such as metal alloys and metal-organic frameworks. 14,15 Compared with conventional hydrogen storage materials, mesoporous nanostructured transition metal oxides or hydroxides endow inorganic materials with unusual magnetic, electrical, and optical properties, whereas the high internal pore surface area can lead to excellent electrochemical properties.…”