A joint team of Stanford and Peking universities found the way to turn seawater into hydrogen fuel using a chemical reaction from a secondary school course. If you pass an electric current through the water, it splits into oxygen and hydrogen - the latter can be used as a reliable source of fuel with zero emissions. In the past, the process of pre-treatment of water was too energy-intensive, why the disadvantages of the procedure outweighed the advantages, but now the experts have figured out how to skip this stage and convert seawater into usable hydrogen.

The experts have developed a new metal coating for the electrodes used in the experiment: it would allow them to resist the chemical reaction that occurs in salty water. Since an electric charge is needed to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, the scientists tried to make their device most environmentally friendly by installing solar panels on it.

The research results and the new method are published in the journal PNAS.