Video Tech Tuesday: Professor invents low-cost polymer catalyst to produce hydrogen

Today, hydrogen is a $200 billion global industry essential to human survival, primarily used to produce fertilizers that feed billions of people. Yet, most of the hydrogen produced relies on high-temperature, energy-intensive processes that consume roughly 2% of the world's total energy supply while releasing massive amounts of waste.

While producing clean hydrogen through water via electrolysis is a promising alternative, the current industry standard relies on platinum, one of the rarest and most expensive metals on the planet, making clean hydrogen far too costly for widespread adoption.

At the University of Arizona, researchers have developed a game-changing solution to address the challenge: a low-cost catalyst that turns water into clean hydrogen at high speed, without the need for expensive precious metals. 

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Professor Emeritus of Chemistry & Biochemistry Dennis Lichtenberger, Ph.D., discovered the breakthrough unexpectedly during his research into the electronic structure of molecules and how controlling electron movement drives chemical reactivity and catalysis. Rather than relying on rare materials like platinum, the catalyst he and his team developed uses iron and sulfur, two of the most common and inexpensive elements found in Earth's crust.

"It was really quite surprising, quite exciting around the lab," Lichtenberger said. "We did not expect it, but I found that my career, from the beginning, was leading in this direction without our knowing it at the time. Fundamentally, I was working on just understanding how to move electrons with low energy, ... and then we found that the way we were moving them allowed us to make this hydrogen."

In lab testing, the prototype cell demonstrates remarkable efficiency. By piping water into the cell and running an electrical current through the iron-sulfur catalyst, the system generates hydrogen at a rate of 250,000 molecules per catalyst site per second, making it roughly 25 times faster than the current industrial standard methods, which use natural enzymes called hydrogenases.

Because the chemistry is straightforward and raw materials are inexpensive and accessible, the primary challenge to developing the technology lies in scaling up system capacity. The team has already constructed a working commercial prototype cell and is focused on expanding the system to build larger production units.

"All the materials are inexpensive. The chemistry is straightforward. It just takes the engineering to put it all together," Lichtenberger said. "And I just want to make the world a better place. The economy can be better; we can create jobs for people ... all of these things can build out of this new technology that we're developing."

To help take this technology from prototype to commercial scale, the team is actively seeking engineering partners, industry collaborators and seed funding to accelerate development and market rollout.

For more information about licensing and partnership opportunities, contact Alex Damiano, Manager of Venture Development at Tech Launch Arizona or alexdamiano@arizona.edu.

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