Hydrogen From the Sea: A Low Cost Sharjah Catalyst Takes Aim at Green Hydrogen’s Water Problem
Green hydrogen has a water problem that rarely makes headlines. Electrolyzers, the machines that split water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity, are designed to run on highly purified freshwater. Yet many of the places with the best solar resources, from the Arabian Gulf to North Africa and northern Chile, are also among the driest on Earth. A team at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates now reports a catalyst that could let electrolyzers draw directly from the ocean, which holds roughly 97 percent of the planet’s water (University of Sharjah, 2026).
The study, published in Chemical Communications, describes a catalyst built from three inexpensive ingredients: nickel hydroxide, cerium oxide, and phosphate (Ul Haq et al., 2026). According to the researchers, the combination requires less energy to operate, favors the desired chemical reaction, and corrodes far less than versions made without the cerium oxide or the phosphate. Under magnification, the material forms tiny, densely packed, pyramid shaped nanostructures that give it substantially more active surface area than plain nickel hydroxide.
Salt is the stubborn obstacle. Seawater is loaded with chloride ions. During electrolysis, those ions attack metal catalysts and compete with the oxygen evolution reaction at the anode, which can generate chlorine and hypochlorite instead of clean oxygen (Dresp et al., 2019). Dr. Tanveer Ul Haq, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Sharjah and a co-author, framed the issue clearly. The real question, he said, is not simply whether seawater can be split but whether it can be split “selectively and durably” without the salt wrecking the catalyst or hijacking the reaction (University of Sharjah, 2026).
The early results are encouraging. In a stress test, the catalyst ran continuously at high output for about 80 hours in simulated seawater without breaking down or losing performance. Ul Haq called this a sign of practical durability rather than a one-off laboratory result, while acknowledging that 80 hours falls well short of commercial requirements, where electrolyzer stack lifetimes are measured in tens of thousands of hours. “It’s not a finished commercial product yet,” he said, “but it’s a solid, well-documented step in that direction” (University of Sharjah, 2026).
The materials story may matter as much as the chemistry. Many of the best performing water splitting catalysts depend on platinum group metals such as iridium and platinum, whose scarcity and price volatility create real supply chain risk for an industry hoping to scale to millions of tonnes per year. Nickel is abundant, phosphate is cheap and ubiquitous, and cerium is one of the more plentiful rare earth elements. Ul Haq described the combination as “far more realistic to manufacture at an industrial scale” than many alternatives in use today.
So what does this mean for the hydrogen economy? The first implication is siting flexibility. If an electrolyzer can run on untreated or lightly treated seawater, a coastal producer no longer needs to build and operate a desalination plant to feed its stacks. Ul Haq pointed to coastal industrial facilities, island nations, and regions near the ocean but short on freshwater as the clearest beneficiaries. That description fits much of the Gulf, which is positioning itself as a major hydrogen producer and exporter. The UAE’s National Hydrogen Strategy targets 1.4 million tonnes of annual low carbon hydrogen production by 2031 (UAE Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, 2023), a goal that will be pursued in one of the most water stressed regions on the planet.
The second implication is social license. Each kilogram of hydrogen requires at least nine kilograms of water in theory, and considerably more once purification losses and cooling are counted (International Renewable Energy Agency [IRENA], 2023). In water scarce communities, competition between hydrogen projects and drinking or agricultural supply can become a political flashpoint. Direct seawater electrolysis gives developers a way to show that their projects place no burden on freshwater.
The third implication is offshore and island production. Researchers in China have already demonstrated a membrane based seawater electrolyzer that operated for more than 3,200 hours (Xie et al., 2022), and offshore wind developers are studying hydrogen production at sea. Durable, low cost catalysts that tolerate chloride are a key building block for those concepts, because maintenance at sea is expensive and component replacement intervals
drive project economics.
A balanced view is still warranted. Some analysts argue that desalination already represents a small share of total hydrogen cost, often estimated at around one to two percent or less, so the economic case for direct seawater electrolysis rests less on water cost than on simplicity, footprint, and reliability (Khan et al., 2021). Impurities in natural seawater such as magnesium, calcium, and microorganisms can also foul electrodes and membranes over time (Tong et al., 2020). For direct seawater systems to beat the proven pathway of desalination followed by conventional electrolysis, they will need lifetimes and efficiencies that match established stacks.
The Sharjah result does not settle that contest, but it moves the field in a useful direction. It pairs cheap, abundant materials with a clear corrosion resistance strategy, and it comes from a region with every incentive to commercialize it. The next milestones are thousands of hours on real seawater, testing in full size electrolyzer stacks, and independent validation. If those milestones arrive, the ocean could become the hydrogen economy’s most abundant and least contested feedstock.
References
Dresp, S., Dionigi, F., Klingenhof, M., & Strasser, P. (2019). Direct electrolytic splitting of seawater: Opportunities and challenges. ACS Energy Letters, 4(4), 933–942. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.9b00220
International Renewable Energy Agency. (2023). Water for hydrogen production. IRENA. https://www.irena.org/Publications/2023/Dec/Water-for-hydrogen-production
Khan, M. A., Al-Attas, T., Roy, S., Rahman, M. M., Ghaffour, N., Thangadurai, V., Larter, S., Hu, J., Ajayan, P. M., & Kibria, M. G. (2021). Seawater electrolysis for hydrogen production: A solution looking for a problem? Energy & Environmental Science, 14(9), 4831–4839. https://doi.org/10.1039/D1EE00870F
Tong, W., Forster, M., Dionigi, F., Dresp, S., Sadeghi Erami, R., Strasser, P., Cowan, A. J., & Farràs, P. (2020). Electrolysis of low-grade and saline surface water. Nature Energy, 5(5), 367–377. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-020-0550-8
UAE Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure. (2023). National hydrogen strategy. Government of the United Arab Emirates. https://u.ae/en/about-the-uae/strategies-initiatives-and-awards/strategies-plans-and-visions/environment-and-energy/national-hydrogen-strategy
Ul Haq, T., et al. (2026). [Nickel hydroxide, cerium oxide, and phosphate catalyst for durable, selective seawater electrolysis]. Chemical Communications. https://doi.org/10.1039/d6cc02785g
University of Sharjah. (2026, October 26). Scientists report low-cost approach to hydrogen production from seawater [Press release]. EIN Presswire. https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/952326586/scientists-report-low-cost-approach-to-hydrogen-production-from-seawater
Xie, H., Zhao, Z., Liu, T., Wu, Y., Lan, C., Jiang, W., Zhu, L., Wang, Y., Yang, D., & Shao, Z. (2022). A membrane-based seawater electrolyser for hydrogen generation. Nature, 612(7941), 673–678. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05379-5
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