Toward greener production of hydrogen

Hydrogen fuel could be an important part of the clean energy revolution. But it faces some challenges. Most hydrogen today is made from natural gas using a process called steam methane reforming, which produces lots of carbon dioxide.

“While hydrogen is a clean fuel, the way that we make it isn’t clean at all,” says Hamed Heidarpour, a PhD student in Ali Seifitokaldani’s Electrocatalysis Lab at McGill University in Montreal.

Creating hydrogen from water through electrolysis, on the other hand, generates no CO2. But the method is inefficient, expensive, and requires a lot of electricity, which doesn’t always come from renewable sources.

Heidarpour and his colleagues found a way to make the process more energy-efficient and stable – and thus more viable for real-world industrial applications.

Their version of electrolysis combines water with hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), an organic compound that can be produced by breaking down non-food plant materials such as pulp and paper residue. In traditional electrolysis, hydrogen is produced at the cathode, and oxygen at the anode. But the reaction – called the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) -- is slow and takes a lot of energy. By including an organic molecule like HMF, the OER is replaced with the more energy-efficient oxidation of HMF, which has the bonus of also producing hydrogen.

“At the same energy input, we can double the production of hydrogen,” he says.

Heidarpour focused on designing a better catalyst to make the HMF oxidation reaction even more energy-efficient, and more commercially viable. The normal copper catalyst does not last long enough for long-term use, so the team added a protective layer of chromium to stabilize it. Their research was published in Chemical Engineering Journal.

The powerful X-ray beamlines of the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan enabled the McGill team to study the catalyst at the atomic scale and gain useful information about its structure and properties. X-ray absorption spectroscopy showed that the chromium kept the copper in its useful metallic state, allowing the catalyst to work better and longer.

“The XAS technique helped us better understand the underlying factors that allowed us to achieve a high-performance and more energy-efficient catalyst,” he says.

Improved catalysts like this are what will help biomass-coupled electrolysis be deployed as a viable commercial operation. But it will be some time before it is ready to be used in real-world industrial applications, says Heidarpour.

“This is still at the early stages,” he says. “To commercialize this technology, we still need more improvements in the performance and stability of the catalyst.”

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Aldien, Summia Saed, Mahdi Salehi, Amirhossein Farzi, Hamed Heidarpour, Sina Pourebrahimi, Olumoye Ajao, Marzouk Benali, and Ali Seifitokaldani. "Enhanced stability and efficient anodic hydrogen production using chromium-modified copper catalysts for hydroxymethylfurfural electrooxidation." Chemical Engineering Journal (2025): 170095. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2025.170095

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