RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) researchers in Japan have announced that they may have discovered the secret to being able to produce hydrogen fuel far more cheaply than the currently used methods by using 95% less Iridium.
Iridium is used as a catalyst in the production process of hydrogen, and we would need to allocate over 40 years of Iridium production in order to make the necessary hydrogen. Iridium is one of the rarest elements in Earth’s crust, with estimated annual production of only 15,000 pounds in 2023.
Source: Hydrogen Fuel News: Read The Article
PSR Analysis: By replacing most of the Iridium with manganese we may be able to reduce the cost of making hydrogen significantly and enable the wide scale use of hydrogen. This is still at an early stage but shows some promise. However, the lack of infrastructure is still a serious issue. PSR
Guy Youngs is Forecast & Adoption Lead at Power Systems Research
