Hydrogen is emerging as an alternative clean fuel; however, its dependency on freshwater will be a threat to a sustainable environment. Seawater, an unlimited source, can be an alternative, but its salt‐rich nature causes corrosion and introduces several competing reactions, hindering its use. To overcome these, a unique catalyst composed of porous sheets of nitrogen‐doped NiMo3P (N‐NiMo3P) having a sheet size of several microns is designed. The presence of large homogenous pores in the basal plane of these sheets makes them catalytically more active and ensures faster mass transfer. The introduction of N and Ni into MoP significantly tunes the electronic density of Mo, surface chemistry, and metal‐non‐metal bond lengths, optimizing surface energies, creating new active sites, and increasing electrical conductivity. The presence of metal‐nitrogen bonds and surface polyanions increases the stability and improves anti‐corrosive properties against chlorine chemistry. Ultimately, the N‐NiMo3P sheets show remarkable performance as it only requires overpotentials of 23 and 35 mV for hydrogen evolution reaction, and it catalyzes full water splitting at 1.52 and 1.55 V to achieve 10 mA cm−2 in 1 m KOH and seawater, respectively. Hence, structural and compositional control can make catalysts effective in realizing low‐cost hydrogen directly from seawater.
Biochar, a carbon-rich solid material and legumes having numerous benefits to the soil-plant system gaining a keen interest as an innovative sustainable approach among the agriculture research community in many parts of the world especially in developing countries in order to enhance soil quality and ensure food security. Thus, with the same approach, we have carried out a field experiment to examine the residual effect of biochar application and summer legumes on soil physical properties and subsequent wheat crop growth at the Research Farm, The University of Agriculture Peshawar during winter 2016-2017. An experiment was designed in two-factor factorial randomized complete block design with three replications in summer 2016 in which three different summer legumes i.e. mungbean, sesbania, and cowpea were grown in the summer for the purpose of grain, green manuring and fodder, a fallow was also included with the purpose of control. Biochar was applied at the rate of 0, 5 and 10 tons ha-1. After the harvesting of summer legumes, sesbania biomass was completely incorporated into the soil while the biomass of other two legumes were removed. The experiment on subsequent wheat was on the same field layout of summer legumes. Both the treatments i.e. previously applied biochar especially 10 tons ha-1 and preceding summer legumes especially sesbania as well as their interaction showed a significant effect on the selected soil physical properties. Similarly, the response of wheat growth was also significant to both treatments but their interaction was non-significant. Thus, it was concluded that both the treatments had a significant effect on the soil physical properties and growth of wheat and should be included in the cropping system.
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