Company focusing on developing an oxygen catalyst for PEM electrolyzers that replaces the precious metal iridium with low cost materials
SANTA CLARITA, Calif :– NewHydrogen, Inc., a BioSolar company (OTC:BSRC), today provided an update on the progress of its green hydrogen technology development under a sponsored research agreement with the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
The company recently announced that it had executed an agreement, replacing the predecessor, to expand ten-fold upon the research efforts.
The initial sponsored research program at UCLA focused on replacing the oxygen catalyst, iridium, a precious metal found only in asteroids, with low cost, earth-abundant materials that meet or exceed the performance characteristics of iridium.
The objective is to develop inexpensive and robust materials with an outstanding ability to catalyze the electrochemical oxygen evolution reaction (OER) while achieving overall high performance water electrolysis for hydrogen production.
Recently, a baseline non-precious metal based OER catalyst was selected and optimized for preliminary evaluations. The catalyst was then successfully synthesized upon adjusting its physical parameters and conditions to exhibit the best material characteristics.
At each iteration, the catalyst material was characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies.
Electrochemical tests were also performed to confirm that the catalyst material indeed was a good reference point for further improvement. Comprehensive testing of the baseline catalyst material gave the researchers high confidence that there would be ample room for further improvement by substituting part of the existing metal element in the baseline material structure.
“We are very pleased to see the progress being made in our green hydrogen program at UCLA,” said Spencer Hall, COO of NewHydrogen. “We have great confidence in Dr. Huang and her team, and are very pleased with what they have accomplished in such a short period of time.
While these updates are more technical in nature, we will continue to make the public and broader capital markets aware of the technology objectives and critical steps of the process.”
About NewHydrogen, Inc.
NewHydrogen, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of BioSolar, Inc. a publicly traded company (Symbol: BSRC). The company is focused on developing a breakthrough electrolyzer technology to lower the cost of green hydrogen production. Hydrogen is the cleanest and most abundant fuel in the universe.
It is zero-emission and only produces water vapor when used. However, hydrogen does not exist in its pure form on Earth so it must be extracted. For centuries, scientists have known how to use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using a device called an electrolyzer. Electrolyzers installed behind a solar farm or wind farm can use renewable electricity to split water, thereby producing green hydrogen.
Unfortunately, electrolyzers are expensive and rely on rare earth materials such as platinum and iridium.
These very expensive materials account for nearly 50% of the cost of electrolyzers. The company’s technology is aimed at significantly reducing or replacing rare earth materials in electrolyzers with inexpensive earth-abundant materials to help usher in a green hydrogen economy that Goldman Sachs estimates will be worth $12 trillion by 2050.
Source: Biosolar
