Rob Jongschaap's List: Hydrogen from Ethanol and Sunlight

In a step toward using hydrogen as an alternative to fossil fuels, researchers from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, the University of Aberdeen in the UK, and the University of Auckland in New Zealand have used ethanol and sunlight to generate hydrogen.

    

Solar-generated hydrogen techniques have largely relied on water but haven’t garnered good results and require expensive materials. Ethanol is a renewable and economical resource that is easily obtained from agricultural and forest waste.

The process begins by placing a powdered photocatalyst and ethanol in a container, then agitating the mixture while exposing it to ultraviolet light. A titanium dioxide semiconductor within the container generates electrons when exposed to the light, and those electrons are captured by metallic gold nanoparticles in the catalyst. Those captured electrons proceed to react with the ethanol's alcohol molecules, producing hydrogen.