Renewable Hydrogen Fuel

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Researchers from ANU have unlocked key aspects of the Oxygen-Evolving Complex in plants, identifying the specific water molecules that are converted to oxygen.  Realisation of this technology would permit essentially unlimited hydrogen production capacity into the future. Technology Professors Ron Pace and Rob Stranger have unlocked key aspects of the structure of the plant photosystem known as the oxygen evolving complex (OEC), which reveal that the natural enzyme site may be highly amenable to bio-mimetic copying. It is estimated that a water oxidation molecular catalyst (likely manganese based) with the known capacity of the natural OEC system, would permit electrolytic hydrogen production at ~0.5 A/cm2 electrode area, using earth abundant materials (manganese, cobalt, nickel). Untreated water (even potentially sea water) and electricity are the only inputs, with an energy conversion efficiency exceeding 80 per cent. This converts to a pure hydrogen cost of $1.75/kg at an electricity price of ~7c/kW hour. This is extremely attractive, exceeding current technologies (alkaline electrolysers) by large margins and even extraction from natural gas. Realisation of this technology would permit essentially unlimited hydrogen production capacity into the future.