NewHydrogen, Inc., a BioSolar company (OTC:BSRC), provided an update on the progress of its green hydrogen technology development under a sponsored research agreement with the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). The company recently announced that it had executed an agreement, replacing the predecessor, to expand ten-fold upon the research efforts.

The initial sponsored research program at UCLA focused on replacing the oxygen catalyst, iridium, a precious metal found only in asteroids, with low cost, earth-abundant materials that meet or exceed the performance characteristics of iridium. The objective is to develop inexpensive and robust materials with an outstanding ability to catalyze the electrochemical oxygen evolution reaction (OER) while achieving overall high performance water electrolysis for hydrogen production.

Recently, a baseline non-precious metal based OER catalyst was selected and optimized for preliminary evaluations. The catalyst was then successfully synthesized upon adjusting its physical parameters and conditions to exhibit the best material characteristics. At each iteration, the catalyst material was characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies. Electrochemical tests were also performed to confirm that the catalyst material indeed was a good reference point for further improvement. Comprehensive testing of the baseline catalyst material gave the researchers high confidence that there would be ample room for further improvement by substituting part of the existing metal element in the baseline material structure.