N.C. A&T Researchers Use Unique Design to Produce Renewable “Green Hydrogen”

EAST GREENSBORO, N.C. (March 25, 2025) — According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, nonrenewable sources like “fossil fuels — petroleum, natural gas, and coal — accounted for about 84% of total U.S. primary energy production in 2023.” When fossil fuels are burned, however, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, trapping in heat and increasing the Earth’s temperature and creating what’s known as the greenhouse gas effect. 

Bishnu Bastakoti, Ph.D., and his research team at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University set out to address related challenges by creating a unique design for a material to assist with the production of a renewable source known as “green hydrogen.”

Various colors are used to represent the way in which hydrogen is synthesized. Brown, gray and blue hydrogen synthesis processes all produce gas, which contributes to the greenhouse effect. Green hydrogen, however, is produced from a renewable energy source like the sun.

The challenge with using sunlight as the source is reproducibility. If it happens to be a cloudy day when the sunlight’s intensity is different, researchers may not get the same result since the amount of hydrogen produced depends on the intensity of the light. To address this, Bastakoti’s team uses a solar simulator in the laboratory. The system works when light falls on the materials, giving energy to the water molecules. When the water molecules dissociate, researchers can measure how much hydrogen is produced from the water. 

Since new materials cannot be created, the team developed a unique design to structure iron titanate in the form of a honeycomb. In the article, “Photocatalyctic Hydrogen Evolution Using Mesoporous Honeycomb Iron Titanate” published in high-impact journal Small, it has been highlighted as frontispiece and selected as hot topics in materials science and photocatalysis.

Bastakoti and research team member Moses D. Ashie reviewed previous findings that “porous honeycomb structures as 3D materials possess large surface area which is very important for charge and mass transport in catalysis and other applications” among others that informed the design and material used. Iron titanate’s numerous applications include carbon dioxide reduction and photocatalytic activities for hydrogen generation.

The pore size of the material that Bastakoti’s team uses is between two and 50 nanometers, which is considered to be in the mesoporous region. And in their study, the honeycomb-structured material produced nearly double the amount of hydrogen than the commercially available material. 

“I think it’s important to bring public awareness to the fact that we have the capability to use efficient, renewable sources to produce the energy we need,” said Bastakoti. “The process of transitioning to green hydrogen may fall alongside the same trend as moving from coal to gas, but it is worth it to move away from nonrenewable sources.”

In the summer of 2024, Bastakoti gave a talk at a “Meet the Scientist” conference in his home country of Nepal about the future of hydrogen energy. Some in attendance had questions about how much green hydrogen would cost. 

“I shared with them that green hydrogen is more expensive, because anything is expensive in the beginning,” he said. “Part of my job is to help laypeople, policymakers and regulators understand that it may be high cost in the beginning, but the benefits are long-term and is what we should focus on for our future generations.”