A research team at the University of Birmingham has unveiled a perovskite-based catalyst that splits water into hydrogen at temperatures roughly 500°C lower than current thermochemical systems, opening a path to cheaper clean fuel using industrial waste heat.
From 1,000°C To 150-500°C
Thermochemical water splitting typically requires temperatures of 700-1,000°C to liberate hydrogen, with catalyst regeneration cycles climbing to 1,300-1,500°C. Findings published in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy by a team led by Professor Yulong Ding of Birmingham's School of Chemical Engineering show that a BNCF perovskite catalyst can generate substantial hydrogen at just 150-500°C and regenerate at 700-1,000°C, roughly 500°C below today's state of the art.
Waste Heat From Steel, Cement And Renewables
"Foundation industry sectors such as steel, cement, glass and chemicals have an abundance of waste heat, which could be harnessed as the heat input for low-temperature hydrogen production," Ding said. "If the hydrogen is used locally, this would overcome the obstacles presented by storage and transport, so enabling the uptake of hydrogen fuel without the need for costly infrastructure." A preliminary techno-economic analysis suggests the route could undercut both green hydrogen, produced by electrolysis, and blue hydrogen, produced from methane with carbon capture.
BNCF100 And A Patent Filing
The team studied a barium-niobium-calcium-iron perovskite family known as BNCF and identified BNCF100 as the best performer, citing strong stability over ten production cycles and minimal structural change under X-ray diffraction. The work was carried out in collaboration with the University of Science and Technology Beijing. University of Birmingham Enterprise has filed a patent application covering the use of BNCF catalysts for low-temperature water splitting and is seeking development partners in the UK and Europe, an effort that arrives alongside the UK's broader clean-energy build-out, the latest hydrogen-fuel-cell deployments and the ammonia fuel-cell breakthroughs reshaping decarbonisation pathways.
Reporting based on coverage from ScienceDaily, University of Birmingham, Innovation News Network, The Engineer and the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy.