Chemical hydrogen storage articles from across Nature Portfolio

Integrating green hydrogen production with the generation of valuable chemicals has the potential to increase the competitiveness of the system. Here, the authors quantitatively evaluate the energetic benefit of coupling hydrogen production with the hydrogenation of feedstocks in a photoelectrochemical device.

Electrochemical water splitting using renewable electricity is a promising method for the sustainable production of hydrogen. This Primer overviews considerations, techniques and methods for water electrolysis and describes methods to improve rigour and reproducibility when analysing electrochemical data.

Understanding the role of active sites in electrooxidation reactions is important yet challenging. Here, the authors use operando spectroscopies to monitor the effect of methanol concentration on Ni₃B/Ni heterostructures during formate production.

A high-efficiency, robust process using a high-concentration imide-based lithium-salt electrolyte enables the electroreduction of nitrogen with stabilized ammonia yield rates of 150 ± 20 nmol s⁻¹  cm⁻² and a current-to-ammonia efficiency that is close to 100%.

Formic acid is a convenient hydrogen storage medium with storage release occurring via reversible hydrogenation of CO₂ and facilitated by noble metal-based catalysts. Now, reversible storage release is demonstrated using a non-noble, Mn-based catalyst in the presence of an amino acid.

Structure sensitivity is an important property in catalysis, although its determination at the atomic cluster scale remains difficult. Here, the authors explore the reactivity of different palladium clusters with low nuclearity identifying the ideal Pd–Pd coordination number for the dehydrogenation of dodecahydro-N-ethylcarbazole.