The project, to be completed over the next three years, is part of DOE’s effort to develop advanced technologies that can supply future energy and transportation systems with affordable hydrogen, with significantly reduced or near-zero emissions.

The UD research team will be the first to demonstrate new “high throughput” methods of screening potentially hundreds to thousands of metal compounds at the nano-scale--particles as small as a few atoms in size--to reveal the most promising triggers for converting liquid fuels to hydrogen.

Chemical engineers Dionisios Vlachos, Jochen Lauterbach and Douglas Buttrey, all in the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology in the UD College of Engineering, are leading the research. The project also involves collaborators from Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. Brookhaven is one of 10 national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by DOE.

“Most fuel cells for vehicular applications and auxiliary power units require onboard the efficient, cheap, and environmentally benign generation of high-quality hydrogen,” Vlachos, who is coordinating the research, said.

“The overall objective of our work is to develop a framework for the discovery of low-cost, robust and active nano-catalysts that will enable efficient hydrogen production.”

The UD research team will use ammonia as the fuel in their proof-of-concept research. In practice, a car or stationary power generator would be fueled with ammonia, which would get chemically converted to hydrogen, thanks to the tiny catalysts. The hydrogen would then be supplied to a fuel cell, resulting in electricity.

Ammonia has a large storage capacity of hydrogen, is easy to make into a liquid form, and is one of the most abundant chemicals produced in the world due to its extensive use in fertilizers.

The scientists will explore a variety of tiny catalysts formed from combinations of inexpensive metals, as well try new techniques for fuel processing to avoid the poisoning of the catalysts by minute factions of carbon monoxide, which are produced in current processing methods.

The UD portion of the research, which will be conducted in the state-of-the-art facilities in the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology, also will involve three postdoctoral researchers, three graduate students and three undergraduates.

The applications of the clean energy research could be far-ranging, from fueling cars to powering generators, heating homes and replacing batteries in electronics for long-lasting, lighter devices.

Additionally, new methods of making catalysts could have other important impacts, according to Vlachos.

“Our research could result in the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, as well as lead to economic growth of the U.S. chemical industry,” he noted.