| Research
Thies recieves DOE research award
 Mark
C. Thies, professor of chemical and bimolecular engineering, has
received an $856,000 3-year award from the Department of Energy
to develop more efficient methods for the centralized production
of hydrogen. The award was one of only three made nationwide under
DOE’s Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative. In addition to Thies, the
project team includes David Bruce from Clemson chemical and bimolecular
engineering, John O’Connell from chemical engineering at UVa,
and Max Gorensek from the Savannah River National Lab.
“The irony is that today, most hydrogen
is produced by using the very fossil fuels we’re trying to
replace,” says Thies. “But we can also produce hydrogen
by splitting water into its two elements, hydrogen and oxygen. The
trick is to find the most energy-efficient manner for carrying out
that splitting process.”
Thies explains that proposed “thermochemical
processes” have the potential to be much more energy-efficient
and reliable than electrolysis, which uses an electric current to
split the water. The so-called sulfur-iodine (S-I) cycle, which
uses a series of coupled chemical reactions to reduce the energy
required to split the water, is the leading international candidate
for the centralized production of hydrogen, and will be the focus
of the team’s efforts.
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