NiFe Nanoparticles Raise Electrolysis Hydrogen Production by 300%

The Internet is roaring with various claims that put water as gas, water splitting as the apple of discordia, and their claimers as either scammers or revolutionary pure gas inventors. There are scammers, indeed, on the internet, but the truth is somewhere in between. Maybe the systems some claim to have made don’t work because of their size and one of their obvious limitations is their hydrogen production capacity.

But what if I told you that…

A company, named QuantumSphere, has designed a metal coating system made for electrolyzers, made out of nanoparticles of NiFe (Fero-Nickel, or in plain english, a combination between iron and nickel)? This coating would cover the electrolyzers‘ anode and cathode and increase the actual contact surface with water by over 1000 times!

That is an amazing thing… the company says that the hydrogen output not only doubles, but it triples itself! In numbers, there is 300% more hydrogen produced from the electrodes covered with these nanoparticles. Electrolysis is the single non-CO2 producing method of making hydrogen. Plus, there’s water and sun everywhere you go.

For years now, the oil refineries add hydrogen to petrol to make it more lightweight. That is because when refineries were designed several decades ago, the oil was pumped out from the top of the wells, and now, as time passes, the drillers reach the bottom, where it’s more thick, so for refineries to work properly, it has to be enriched with hydrogen. The only economical solution until now was to obtain hydrogen from methane gas, process that would produce CO2. Electrolysis was not a viable option, being more expensive. Now, on the other hand, with QuantumSphere‘s new invention, electrolysis could become the cheapest way to follow in order to produce hydrogen. But this paragraph is the worst and dirty part of the best.

QuantumSphere says that the hydrogen will be produced much more cheap (to be read “in larger quantities”), and the option of manufacturing home-based hydrogen chargers for fuel cell vehicles is closer than ever. The list doesn’t stop here, because they want to apply their coating to the electrodes that make up the actual fuel cells, replacing the expensive platinum electrodes, and making the fuel cell much more efficient. The same process applies to the lithium ion battery technologies from A123 systems and Altairnano.

Until the fuel cell technology becomes mainstream, the company wants to focus on delivering this solution for the oil companies, perfect the invention, and slowly but steadily to enter the large consumer market.