This week is turning out to be a good one for the discovery of new catalysts. First we had catalysts to clean up toxic pollutants, and now researchers at Ohio State University say that they have developed a catalyst to make hydrogen from ethanol at 90% efficiency at only 350 C (a low temperature in biofuel industry standards). The low temperature will bring both cost and energy savings.

Ohio State University professor Umit Ozkan says that the catalyst is significantly less expensive than others being developed because it does not contain precious metals. Instead, it contains cerium oxide (a common ingredient in ceramics) and calcium.

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