Over the next six weeks, we will be taking you inside the walls of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology to highlight some of the boldest research initiatives in the country. Our series will show the potential impact these ground-breaking projects have on the ever-shifting economic landscape in the region. 

DURHAM -- A car that emits only water vapours. A world without a dependence on oil. A society that runs on hydrogen. It may sound like the stuff of a science-fiction movie, but if the researchers at UOIT have anything to say about it, the hydrogen economy could be a reality in our lifetime.

“Hydrogen is a very promising fuel for the future,” says Greg Naterer, a UOIT professor and researcher.

Dr. Naterer has much reason to be optimistic. He is the lead researcher on a multi-million dollar project that is hoping to solve at least part of the world’s energy crisis.

The world currently has a big problem: “There’s an extreme dependence on fossil fuels contributing to climate change and it’s happening at the same time that there’s a growing demand for oil,” he said.

The need for a fuel of the future is great. And hydrogen, which only emits heat and water vapour when burned, is a prime candidate.

But the problem with using hydrogen is it does not exactly exist naturally -- it cannot, for example, be mined from the earth like fossil fuels.

“So the major challenge is how do you get the hydrogen,” Dr. Naterer said. “How do you produce it?”

Currently, there are two ways to produce hydrogen: one is to burn natural gas and extract the hydrogen from that process -- which really goes against the reason for getting hydrogen in the first place -- and the other is to use electricity to extract it. Neither is particularly efficient or cost-effective and, if hydrogen is to be used on a larger scale to replace traditional fuel sources, it is imperative it be mass produced at a low cost.

That’s where Dr. Naterer and his team come in.

UOIT is leading a team of 23 researchers from around the world -- including representatives from various universities across Ontario, Atomic Energy of Canada, and the Argonne National Laboratory in the U.S. -- that are trying to find a way to use the spent energy from nuclear reactors to mass produce hydrogen in a sustainable and efficient manner.

“This... is going to significantly increase the efficiency of producing hydrogen because it produces hydrogen directly from the heat of a nuclear reactor – the steam,” Dr. Naterer explains.

It is a big idea that would harness the potential from one of Durham’s largest sectors -- nuclear energy -- and uses it to solve a societal problem that could potentially impact millions of people around the world.

How does it work? The technology being developed would use heat from nuclear reactors in a thermochemical process to decompose water into its basic components of oxygen and hydrogen. The water splitting is done using a copper-chlorine cycle. Dr. Naterer envisions thermochemical plants located near nuclear centres that use the spent heat from the nuclear plant to generate a new hydrogen fuel source.

The idea is not without its challenges, but if it works, the process has the potential to not only solve one of the biggest obstacles to using hydrogen, but put Durham’s name on the hydrogen map.

Already, the need for hydrogen around the world is growing at a rate of 10 per cent each year, Dr. Naterer says. It is used in the petroleum industry, as well as other industrial sectors.

“That’s not including the huge need that will come from the transportation industry,” Dr. Naterer said, referring to the as yet untapped hydrogen vehicle market.

“The potential is great and the need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, with its greenhouse gas emissions, is great as well,” he said. “There is an urgency here.”