The Ocean Has Massive Energy Reserves. Scientists Just Learned How to Take Advantage of Them
By Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics.
Excerpt: ...a new electrode produced by the U.S. company Equatic can safely extract oxygen and hydrogen from seawater while leaving the salt, which usually produces deadly chlorine gas. As a bonus, this method uses direct air capture to remove carbon from the atmosphere. And the anodes are recyclable—they only need a recoating of catalysts (made from abundant materials) every three years. ...Producing hydrogen via seawater electrolysis has the nasty habit of also producing toxic chlorine gas, so current hydrogen production relies on pure water—a resource that’s becoming more and more precious as the world warms. Now, the carbon removal company Equatic—thanks to funding support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)—has successfully developed “oxygen-selective anodes” (OSAs) that will hopefully help scale up hydrogen production via seawater electrolysis. ...The process does produce acidic and alkaline streams. According to New Scientist, Equatic raises the pH of the acidic stream by flowing the material over silica-rich rocks, and the alkaline stream simply reacts with carbon dioxide to form stable minerals. This is two-birds-one-stone innovation, as the process uses direct air capture technology to trap atmospheric CO2 into solid minerals....