Wow, break through in hydrogen greation from MIT

[Vanraw]

Move this to political if you think it is.

This could change everything as far as hydrogen production is concerned. Sun energy creating the catalyst for extracting hydrogen and water

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[Slamz]

I'm not grasping the difference between what they're doing and regular electrolysis, except that they're hooking it up to a fuel cell.

Currently available electrolyzers, which split water with electricity and are often used industrially, are not suited for artificial photosynthesis because they are very expensive and require a highly basic (non-benign) environment that has little to do with the conditions under which photosynthesis operates.

Well that cleared it up! ... wait, what?

[Jakensama]

I think they are saying it does the same thing except it isn't "very expensive " and doesn't "require a highly basic (non-benign) environment that has little to do with the conditions under which photosynthesis operates."

[Singularity]

I read a discussion about this a few months ago on another board I frequent, and someone who was an engineer explained this to us. I'll paraphrase him as best I can. Basically, the problem with current solar power is that it isn't viable once the sun disappears from the sky for two reasons. One, the abundant leftover energy couldn't be stored very efficiently, and two, it couldn't be stored for lengthy periods due to this inefficiency. Because of this, when the sun went down, you had a limited window of available power. In order to get the most out of what energy you had left over, you rigged up a bunch of expensive equipment, but that still didn't solve the inefficient storage system. You were just losing too much energy.

Since you couldn't store the sun's energy very efficiently, solar was used as a secondary power source for the most part. Power your home directly off solar during the day, scrap the expensive equipment and use your local power company at night or on cloudy, rainy days.

What this breakthough does is store solar energy efficiently by mimicking photosynthesis. Use that leftover energy and the catalysts to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, recombine them in a fuel cell as needed, and bingo! You have an efficient power source. If you were to use electrolysis to split hydrogen and oxygen up, you'd be dumping a lot of energy into the process (which is inefficient) and probably use a bunch of expensive machines and elements, too. The beauty of all this is that it can be done with water, your catalysts, and cheap ingredients at room temperature and pressure, and you're not being inefficient. It works just like a houseplant - chill out and soak up the sun during the day, then use that efficiently-stored energy at night or on cloudy days when you need it.

Now all you gotta do is work all this into the current battery system, or design a new one. That shouldn't take too long - a few months to few years tops now that you've physically demonstrated the theoretics of it all.


If we have any engineers or experts in solar energy they can go back and see if I got anything wrong, but that's what I remember from what this guy wrote.

Move this to political if you think it is.

If this was the old flame forum, I would pretend this is political and totally flame you right now, Maull! :wink:

[Hoofhurr]

Sounds about right to me.

[amins]

I've got an engy friend who started her career @ Ballard heading up the fuel cell division and then went to work on the space arm as well as the fuel cells on the station, I'm going to pass this off to her and see what kind of timeline this would have...

So, to get this right CK, whatever solar harnesting system you have is then attached to this catalyst, which breaks down the energy into storable units, then recombines them 'as-needed'? That's incredible.

[Vanraw]

I think the main difference with this and existing hydrogen farming mechanism, is that this would basically not cost any external energy. Today, the most efficient way to break hydrogen from its oxygen in H20, is by using Natural gas. Iceland uses ele3cytricity because of the ample amount of geothermal energy.

I could envision a gas station or even a home that creates its own hydrogen from water using nothing but the sun.

Course for this to really work you would need to use ocean water, or we would create droughts. In that case we would basically have refineries replaced with coastal based solar plants. Use the same distribution capabilities that exist today for gas.

This could change everything.

[Flab]

I find this all offensive.

[Diggles]

while hydrogen is for sure the transport fuel of the future..this doesnt seem like anything special to me

Stuff like the 51kw capicator that was recently shown seems like it would make more sense.

The stupid thing is...YOU might not use all the solar energy you make, but the grid could sure use it...anytime.

[amins]

So, what if I was to connect or use this system for off peak power generation from a Wind Farm, in its storage and transporation?

[Moristans]

From the article, it looks like using solar power to produce hydrogen is not the breakthrough they are talking about. The major breakthrough is a means to actually reproduce photosynthesis, which is the ultimate source of 99.9% of the energy ever stored on this planet.

Recall your high school Biology: Plants take photons from any light source and use the energy to liberate the hydrogen and electrons from water. The waste product is oxygen. They use the released electrons in a transport chain to produce ATP. The energy stored in ATP is then used to make glucose, which the plant stores to be oxidized later for growth and reproduction.

When glucose is oxidized, electrons are transported along a chain again and hydrogens are transferred back to oxygen to form water and make energy.

The guys at MIT have pretty much dupilcated this process using sunlight, and catalysts to release both oxygen and hydrogen from water.

The breakthrough seems to be an inexpensive and environmentally friendly way to catalyze the release of oxygen from water.

Combined with catalyzed hydrogen production, you now have both oxygen and hydrogen which can be recombined in some sort of energy cell (I guess this duplicates the electron transport chain?) to make water and store energy.

That's the deal right there. You can, hypothetically, store the energy from sunlight efficently and inexpensively, instead of having to use it right away. The water can be recycled over and over again in such a process.

[Hoofhurr]

Yeah the break through seems to be in the cobalt and phosphorous catalyst. Environmentally and socially friendly though? The U.S. already consumes 1/3 of the worlds cobalt resources a large chunk of which happened to be mined in the DRC.

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Might as well keep cheap and environmentally friendly in context hehe.

[Moristans]

Yeah, it's all relative.

[Hoofhurr]

Hey if this takes off though it might be time to by some stocks and fund your favorite militia group.

[Vanraw]

It might be time to think about colbolt mining stock, if it took off. Perhaps something like this would make america interested in the congo / affrica genocide.

[Venganza]

I may be thinking too simply.. but this might make space travel within the solar system easier.

Energy from the sun makes oxygen and hydrogen, astronauts breath one and burn the other for the engine.

How about huge satelites around mars staying in the sun and periodicly dumping oxygen into the atmosphere.. terraform us a new planet, depending on how much cobalt mars has you could have robots going back and forth swapping cobalt for Oxygen.

[Snowreap]

the oxygen and hydrogen have to come from somewhere, they don't materialize from sunlight. typically you use water as your source of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, although it's heavy to carry around for this purpose. you might as well just carry the oxygen and hydrogen separately to start with and be done with it.

plus, you can't burn hydrogen without an oxidizer (like oxygen). so if you want to use it as fuel you might take energy from the sun, split water into hydrogen and oxygen, then mix them back together to produce steam (steam is what you produce when you 'burn' hydrogen), which you eject out the nozzle of your engine. this is a lot of effort for no net gain (you could have used the sunlight to produce steam directly). plus, when you run out of water you run out of oxygen and hydrogen atoms, so really the water is your fuel in this case.

this isn't a way to produce energy, it's just an efficient way to store energy you already have access to.

-ken

[Hoofhurr]

The cost of getting the water into space is enormous.

[Venganza]

What about we hire:





Oh well it was an idea

[Moristans]

Lol :lol:

[Zeeroh]

Only counterable by ice ninjas.

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[Zeeroh]

Sadly, we allready missed the show of the century.

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