Hydrogen and Fuel cells Hydrogen production may soon be using Molybdenum, Graphene and other Minerals for its production. Then Fuel Cells that use Graphite will convert the Hydrogen for use in auto's, homes, portable generators and other industrial purposes. Hydrogen from water is also a sustainable fuel with no carbon footprint.
Initially existing infrastructure that presently transports natural gas can be adopted to transport both the natural gas and the hydrogen -at different time periods- as required.
Low cost, scalable water-splitting fuels the future hydrogen economy
Walt Mills
June 1, 2017
https://news.psu.edu/story/470157/2017/06/01/research/low-cost-scalable-water-splitting-fuels-future-hydrogen-economy
Interesting
Although platinum is a near-perfect catalyst, it is also expensive. A cheaper catalyst could make hydrogen a reasonable alternative to fossil fuels in transportation, and power fuel cells for energy storage applications.
"Molybdenum disulfide has been predicted as a possible replacement for platinum, because the Gibbs free energy for hydrogen absorption is close to zero," said Mauricio Terrones, professor of physics, materials science and engineering, and chemistry, Penn State. The lower the Gibbs free energy, the less external energy has to be applied to produce a chemical reaction.
However, experimentally, there are drawbacks to using molybdenum disulfide as a catalyst. In its stable phase, molybdenum disulfide is a semiconductor, which limits its ability to conduct electrons. To get around that problem, the team added reduced graphene oxide, a highly conducting form of carbon. Then, to further decrease the free energy, they alloyed the molybdenum disulfide with tungsten to create a thin film with alternating graphene and tungsten-molybdenum disulfide layers. The addition of tungsten lowers the electrical voltage required to split water by half, from 200 millivolts with pure molybdenum disulfide, to 96 millivolts with the tungsten-molybdenum alloy.