Traditional approaches to breaking down water, which consists of hydrogen and oxygen, involve use of expensive catalysts or electric current passed through water.
Producing hydrogen from water with carbon/charcoal powder
In the latest advance in efforts to find an inexpensive way to make hydrogen from ordinary water — one of the keys to the much-discussed “hydrogen economy” — scientists are reporting that powder from high-grade charcoal and other forms of carbon can free hydrogen from water illuminated with laser pulses. A report on the discovery appears in ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry C.
