Imperial College London has announced that it has developed a hydrogen fuel cell that uses a catalyst made of iron instead of rare and expensive platinum, reducing the cost of hydrogen fuel cells. The technology enables the widespread deployment of hydrogen fuels and will ultimately put the world on a path to net-zero emissions by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Hydrogen fuel cells convert hydrogen into electricity with the only by-product being water vapor, making them an attractive green alternative, especially for the automotive industry. However, their widespread use has been hindered in part by the cost of one of the main components. To facilitate the reactions that generate electricity, fuel cells rely on catalysts made of platinum, which are expensive and scarce.
"Currently, around 60% of the cost of a single fuel cell comes from platinum catalysts. Costs need to be reduced for fuel cells to become a truly viable alternative to fossil fuels," said the lead researcher in the Faculty's Department of Chemistry.
Now, a European team led by researchers at the Institute has created a catalyst that uses only iron, carbon and nitrogen, a cheap and readily available material, and has shown that it can be used to run fuel cells at high power.
In this new catalyst, all the iron is dispersed in a conductive carbon matrix in the form of single atoms. All the atoms in it are clustered together, making it more reactive. These properties mean that iron facilitates the reactions needed in fuel cells and is a good substitute for platinum. In laboratory tests, the team showed that in a real fuel cell system, the performance of the single-atom iron catalyst approaches that of platinum-based catalysts.
In addition, the method developed by the team could also be applicable to other applications beyond fuel cells, such as chemical reactions that use atmospheric oxygen rather than expensive chemical oxidants as reactants, and wastewater treatment that uses air to remove harmful pollutants.
