The Newcastle Herald's Opinion, Friday, September 4, 2020: Professor Behdad Moghtaderi putting Newcastle on the energy map.

Very clean and green.

After all, extracting combustible hydrogen from decidedly non-combustible water sounds like a miraculous answer to the world's fuel and energy needs.

But if it was an easy process, we'd be doing it en masse already.

Scientists and engineers have been working on one aspect of hydrogen technology - the fuel cell - since the 19^th century.

And yes, fuel cells were used in the Apollo space missions, and breakthroughs were made in the 1980s and 1990s, some of them by car manufacturers.

However it's taken the urgency of climate change to put new impetus into hydrogen research, including the development of fuel cells as replacements for batteries or diesel generators.

The US Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy lists a series of challenges to hydrogen, not least of which is the amount of energy needed to create and store the fuel.

Despite these challenges, real progress is being made in turning the great dream into reality.

As reporter Matthew Kelly writes today, researchers at the University of Newcastle led by Professor Behdad Moghtaderi, a chemical engineer, are making big and practical strides in that push.

Professor Moghtaderi obtained his initial degree in Iran and has worked in Newcastle since 1999.

He lists the applied, or practical, end of "thermo-fluid engineering" as his main research interest.

This latest hydrogen project follows other ground-breaking work with coal and gas.

Simply put, Professor Moghtaderi's equipment condenses pure water out of thin air, and then runs an electrical current through the water (H20) to split it into its constituent parts of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule.

All of this is done with solar energy, justifying its description as "green hydrogen".

It is worth noting that when the professor first unveiled the water "harvester", it was put forward as a way of providing water supplies in arid areas. In a similar vein, the "waste" product from the "green hydrogen" maker is oxygen, itself a valuable commodity.

One of Professor Moghtaderi's earlier projects was a low-energy oxygen-making plant. This is academia at its practical best.

He and his colleagues are a credit to Newcastle, and proof positive - if any was needed - that not all the bright ideas reside in capital cities.

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