Is water a source of energy? Water oxidation for hydrogen production

Abstract

The rate of CO2 increase and the supposed catastrophic consequences this is producing to our planet, thus it is obvious that our society has an urgent need for carbon-neutral renewable energy source. An attractive and clean energy vector to solve this problem could be H2, but while the storage and separation of hydrogen has already been achieved with certain degree of success, the question of where do we get a sustainable hydrogen source still remains to be answered. At the moment the main source of hydrogen comes from the “reforming” of natural gas although this is a fossil fuel and CO2 is generated in this process. However generating H2 from H2O would avoid this problem. It is envisaged to get insight into the nature of oxidation water catalysts, and the main goal will be to find out a catalyst able to do that with a high activity, then anchoring into a solid support. Computationally a deep research changing the metal and also the ligands in octahedral mono and dinuclear metal complexes will be achieved first