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Nature Podcast

Super-efficient catalyst boosts hopes for hydrogen fuel

Nature Podcast

podcast@nature.com

News, Science, Technology

4.5893 Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2020

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, perfecting catalysts that split water using light, and the mystery of missing matter in the Universe.


In this episode:


00:44 Water splitting

After decades of research scientists have managed to achieve near perfect efficiency using a light-activated catalyst to separate hydrogen from water for fuel. Research Article: Takata et al.News and Views: An almost perfectly efficient light-activated catalyst for producing hydrogen from water


05:37 Research Highlights

The hidden water inside the earth’s core, and how working memory ‘works’ in children. Research Highlight: Our planet’s heart is wateryResearch Highlight: A child’s memory prowess is revealed by brain patterns


07:53 Measuring matter

Estimations of baryonic matter in the Universe have conflicted with observations, but now researchers have reconciled these differences. Research Article: Macquart et al.


13:42 Pick of the Briefing

We pick our highlights from the Nature Briefing, including the possibility of a black hole in our solar system, and the biting bees that force plants to bloom. Physics World: If ‘Planet Nine’ is a primordial black hole, could we detect it with a fleet of tiny spacecraft?; Scientific American: Bumblebees Bite Plants to Force Them to Flower (Seriously)

Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

nature an experiment i don't know yet why is like so far like it sounds so simple they had no idea

0:10.7

but now the data's i find this not only refreshing but but at some level astounding nature

0:20.4

welcome back to the Nature.

0:25.7

Welcome back to the nature podcast.

0:29.3

This week, splitting water with light and a measure of matter in the universe.

0:32.1

I'm Charmoney Bandell.

0:33.6

And I'm Nick Al.

0:36.9

Thank you. And I'm Nick Al.

0:50.4

First up, for decades, hydrogen has been touted as a sustainable fuel for the future.

0:57.7

When hydrogen burns, it releases a lot of energy, but only emits pure water. No greenhouse gas or pollutants to worry about. The problem is that most methods of producing hydrogen fuels,

1:03.8

either rely on fossil fuels, or are too energy and cost intensive to be feasible on a large scale.

1:10.7

But what if you could produce it

1:12.2

cleanly using nothing but water and sunlight? Hydrogen from pure water and solar energy,

1:18.9

it can be really clean and renewable hydrogen. This is Kazanari-domen. Water is made up of one

1:26.6

oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms and Kazanari specialdomen. Water is made up of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, and

1:29.6

Kazanari specialises in developing materials which can use light to split water, releasing

1:35.3

the hydrogen. These materials are called photocatalysts, and they've been around for decades,

1:41.7

but so far they have been too inefficient to be useful at scale.

1:46.1

This week in nature, though, Kassanari has developed a photo catalyst with almost 100% quantum efficiency,

1:53.0

meaning nearly every absorbed photon is used to make hydrogen.

1:56.4

I myself was actually surprised.

2:00.4

Two years ago, we achieved almost 70% quantum efficiency.

...

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