Steel mills, glass plants, and cement facilities generate enormous amounts of waste heat from their process temperatures, which currently escapes unused into the atmosphere. Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a catalyst that harnesses this waste heat to split water into clean hydrogen at temperatures starting from 150 degrees Celsius. This is a range that other thermochemical processes have previously been unable to achieve, and it is exactly the temperature window where industrial waste heat occurs.
How Thermochemical Water Splitting Works
Hydrogen can be produced in various ways. The currently dominant method is steam reforming of natural gas, where steam reacts with methane to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide. This is cheap but climate damaging. The cleanest alternatives are electrolysis, where water is split into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity, and thermochemical processes, where heat drives this separation.
Thermochemical water splitting uses redox catalysts made from metal oxides. In the first step, the metal oxide releases oxygen at high temperature. In the second step, at lower temperature, the reduced material reacts with water: it extracts oxygen from the water, returns this oxygen to its own structure, and releases hydrogen in the process. The cycle begins anew. This approach requires no electricity and theoretically needs only water and heat. The problem so far was the temperature requirement: previous materials required 700 to 1,000 degrees for the splitting step and up to 1,500 degrees for catalyst regeneration. Such temperatures exist only in high-temperature reactors and concentrated solar thermal power plants, not in ordinary industrial facilities.
The BNCF Catalyst From Birmingham
A research team led by Professor Yulong Ding from the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Birmingham has solved this temperature problem with a new perovskite catalyst. The material is designated BNCF100 and consists of barium, niobium, calcium, and iron. All four elements are abundant and non-toxic; synthesis requires no rare materials and no elaborate manufacturing process. This distinguishes BNCF100 from many earlier high-performance catalysts for water splitting.
According to the study published in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy on April 30, 2026, developed in collaboration with the University of Science and Technology Beijing, BNCF100 produces hydrogen at temperatures between 150 and 500 degrees Celsius. Catalyst regeneration requires 700 to 1,000 degrees instead of the previous up to 1,500 degrees. The University of Birmingham reports that the catalyst maintained its performance over ten production cycles. This is precisely the temperature window in which waste heat from steel mills, cement plants, glass plants, and chemical facilities occurs: processes such as blast furnaces, glass melting, and cement kilns generate waste heat streams between several hundred and over one thousand degrees that currently remain largely unused.
The University of Birmingham Enterprise has filed a patent application for the use of BNCF catalysts for low-temperature water splitting and is seeking industrial partners for further development.
Comparison: What Other Methods Achieve
Green hydrogen through electrolysis is at the heart of the European hydrogen strategy and is considered the cleanest available method. However, the process requires large amounts of renewable electricity. Because electrolysis first absorbs energy and then converts it into hydrogen, it cannot benefit from industrial waste heat: the heat would first have to be converted back into electricity, a process involving substantial losses.
Other thermochemical cycles have existed in research for decades. The most famous is the sulfur-iodine cycle, which operates starting at around 800 degrees Celsius and has been studied by several national energy research institutes. No commercial facility exists to date; the high temperatures prevented widespread industrial deployment. If BNCF100 actually begins producing at 150 degrees, this represents a qualitative leap compared to these earlier approaches. The difference is not just in the number but in accessibility: what works starting at 150 degrees can in principle be retrofitted into any facility that has this waste heat.
For comparison with renewable technologies: the cost of solar photovoltaic technology fell from approximately 100 U.S. dollars per watt in 1976 to below 0.30 dollars in 2024. This decline came almost exclusively through scaling effects in mass production. Whether a similar learning curve effect can occur with BNCF catalysts is unknown, as there is yet no mass production experience.
Scaling, Reactor Design, Integration: Three Open Questions
The Birmingham experiment was conducted at laboratory scale with gram quantities of catalyst material. An industrial process would require tons, and it is not yet known whether reactivity and stability are maintained during scaling up. The University has begun industrial discussions but has announced no date for a first pilot plant.
Second, every thermochemical reactor requires two temperature zones: a low-temperature area for hydrogen production and a high-temperature area for catalyst regeneration. Connecting these two zones in a single facility without creating heat losses between cycles is an engineering problem that extends far beyond catalyst chemistry and requires its own research effort.
Third, integration into existing industrial processes is challenging. Each factory has a different waste heat profile, different temperature levels, and a different process chain. A hydrogen system that draws off waste heat must be retrofittable without interrupting ongoing production. Whether this succeeds technically and economically will only become clear when first pilot projects emerge with actual industrial partners. The laboratory work from Birmingham provides an unusually concrete foundation for this.