Carbon/charcoal powder could help pave the way toward the touted “hydrogen economy.”
Researchers at Wakayama University, Wakayama-city, Japan, report that they have been able to generate hydrogen at room temperature from water without using costly catalysts or electrodes. Instead, they add high-grade charcoal or other forms of carbon to the water and then beam nanosecond pulses of laser light at the mixture. Details appear in an article in ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry C.
