New Research Studies Bring Promise of Cheaper Hydrogen Fuel

Two new discoveries may bring down the daunting cost of hydrogen fuel by making it cheaper both to produce and to convert into energy. Instead of using precious platinum to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology mixed cobalt and phosphate into water and ran a current through it, achieving the same result at a greatly reduced cost. Platinum is $1,700 to $2,000 an ounce, while cobalt runs about $2.25 an ounce and phosphate, just 5 cents. And in the fuel cells that produce energy from the hydrogen, researchers at Monash University in Australia replaced platinum with a conducting polymer ($57 an ounce), prompting hopes for hydrogen as a fuel of the future.