03-02-2009, 06:53 AM
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.
If this was the old flame forum, I would pretend this is political and totally flame you right now, Maull! :wink:
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.
Vanraw 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:
The CK Machine
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