Paper: Permanent Magnets Double Efficiency of Electrolysis

Max Nozin on the LENR Forum has posted an article from Chemistry World about a research team which has been able to double the efficiency of electrolysis (splitting the H and O in water) using permanent magnets for the purpose of producing hydrogen gas. This could prove to be an important discovery in the efforts to build a ‘hydrogen economy’.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Water splitting is the most sustainable way of producing hydrogen, and could be the basis of a global economy that no longer runs on fossil fuels. The technology to produce large amounts of hydrogen from water splitting is ready to go, but is still much more expensive than steam methane reforming – a process that generates large amounts of carbon dioxide.

‘Our strategy improves the efficiency of water electrolysers,’ explains José Ramón Galán-Mascarós, from the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia in Spain, who led the study. ‘We achieve hydrogen production at low potentials just by approaching a permanent magnet to the anode, which results in immediate energy savings.’ Moreover, the team used catalysts based on earth-abundant metals like nickel and iron, unlike other water splitting efforts that need precious metals. Galán-Mascarós says that in the lab they can increase the efficiency of producing hydrogen using an electrolyser by 100% (see video). In an industrial setting he’d expect efficiency gains to be 30–40%.

According to the article, the reason this method works well is due to spin

The original research report has been published in Nature at this link (full text behind a paywall)”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0404-4