UW-Madison Engineering researcher and professor Manos Mavrikakis, along with researchers from Tufts University and Harvard University, discovered a way to produce hydrogen using less energy and less money.
The United States uses 9 million tons of hydrogen per year, yet the Earth produces relatively little hydrogen, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The hydrogen produced the way the researchers discovered could be used as a clean source of energy for fuel cell-powered vehicles of the future, according to UW Communications.
The research team developed a catalyst, which uses small amounts of platinum, which works at a lower temperature than current catalysts.
Mavrikakis and his team of researchers focused on the way the atoms of the catalyst function. The team, with assistance from the UW-Madison Division of Information Technology and the Center for High-Throughput Computing, modeled the new catalyst to inspect it in detail.
