Super-efficient catalyst boosts hopes for hydrogen fuel
Nature Podcast
podcast@nature.com
4.5 • 893 Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2020
⏱️ 20 minutes
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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 watery; Research 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)
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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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