A team of researchers from the universities of Antwerp and KU Leuven, in Leuven (Belgium), has devised a new device that, while removing impurities from the air, generates hydrogen. “The device has two spaces separated by a membrane. In one the decontamination process is carried out. On the other hand, the compounds that degrade contribute to produce hydrogen in the other ”, explains one of its developers, Professor Sammy Verbruggen, an expert in Engineering applied to the life sciences. This element can be stored and used later as fuel, as is already done, for example, in certain buses.
The key, according to Verbruggen and his collaborators in a press release, lies in the structure of the membrane, which uses different nanomaterials as catalysts . In essence, the technology is similar to the one that allows hydrogen to be extracted from water, and to work it is enough to expose the device to solar radiation. Now, the objective of these scientists is to improve the procedure and make it more similar to that used by photovoltaic panels, although in this case the intention is not to directly obtain electrical energy.
"At present we are working on a small scale, on surfaces of a few square centimeters, but our intention is that this advance can be applied to industrial processes . For this we also have to optimize the system that takes advantage of solar energy," says Verbruggen.
Image: University of Antwerp / Ku Leuven
