Scientists have found out a way to create energy and fuel from solar power. It is very cheap plus very sustainable. They have generated a clean and usable hydrogen gas from biomass.
This new discovery will definitely help lessen the human waste and other biomass materials while at the same time giving and producing more energy and fuel for the world. Since natural resources are declining in a speedy manner, this hydrogen gas from biomass will be really helpful. The process that the scientists made was not as difficult as the gasification process. Moreover, gasification process takes up lots of time and it needs high temperature to decompose the biomass fully, explained Science Daily.
With this new process, hydrogen gas from biomass is done with a simple photocatalytic conversion process. A biomass is placed in alkaline water and catalytic nanoparticles are added to it. After that, it will be placed under a light just like a solar light. This process will ultimately produce a hydrogen gas that can be collected in air. The produced hydrogen gas is clean of carbon monoxide and other fuel-cell inhibitors and that makes it okay to be used for power, reported the University of Cambridge.
The real process that happened is that the catalytic nanoparticles were absorbed by the solar light. After being absorbed, it went through some chemical changes by rearrangement of its atoms together with the water and the biomass. In the end, they formed hydrogen fuel other organic chemicals, such as formic acid and carbonate. The process just cleaned the chemical energy stored in raw biomass, said Dr. David Wakerley, from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, the joint lead author on a new research paper published in Nature Energy. "With this in place we can simply add organic matter to the system and then, provided it's a sunny day, produce hydrogen fuel," he added.