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Efficiently releasing stored chemical energy harnessed from renewable sources remains one of the great scientific challenges facing the catalysis research community. Meanwhile, Mother Nature performs this transformation with ease using abundant metal-containing enzymes as catalysts. So far, lack of an inexpensive and stable catalyst has limited widespread, economical use of hydrogen fuel cells (HFCs). But thanks to a recent breakthrough at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), that may change.
Read more at: Lessons from nature inspire breakthrough in catalyzing electricity from renewable energy
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Study: Efficient new catalyst may pave way for hydrogen economy
...from the 1950's an even cheaper and far more effective catalyst combo went unnoticed and shelved - an accidentally discovered, unneeded, useless by product (hydrogen) of a mining ore process - catalysts which become glaringly obvious when viewed from portions of Stanley Pons' and Martin Fleischmann's 1989 process (Note - this ease of separation of water into hydrogen and oxygen occurred with sunlight alone)
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‘Water and sunlight the formula for sustainable fuel’ + (plus?)
What part of 'field potential' possibilities, are still laying dormant within compounds, unacknowledged, awaiting a catalytic activation?
How might a large portion of the explosive field separation potential of alkali metals in water be triggered while the alkali metals remain in a reusable catalytic compound state?
Reactivity of an alkali metal with water. All the alkali metals react with water to produce elementary hydrogen and the corresponding alkali hydroxides. The reactivity increases with increasing periodic number. The metals rubidium and cesium explode when brought into contact with oxygen.