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Using Sun's Energy to Split Water Means Solar Power All Night
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jul 31, 2008 07:05 PM
from the party-like-it's-2099 dept.
from the party-like-it's-2099 dept.
phorm writes "Reuters is carrying an article about a recent MIT development which may pave the way for solar-energy to be collected for use in low-input periods. According to Reuters, the discovery of the a new catalyst for separating hydrogen+oxygen from water requires only 10% of the electricity of current methods. This would allow storage-cells to function as a form of battery for other forms of energy-collection, such as solar panels. The new method is also much safer (and likely environmentally friendly) than current methods, which require the use of a dangerously caustic environment, and specialized storage containers." sanjosanjo points out coverage of the process at EE Times, which features the MIT group's press release.
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I have my doubts... but, (Score:5, Insightful)
If that is true (although I definitely have my doubts, as tales and empty promises of the past have made all of us highly skeptical when we read something like this), then it should open the road for a significantly more efficient means of producing hydrogen for hydrogen powered cars / devices. Hell a car equipped with a solar cell could just bake during the day to recharge itself and be ready to go for the commute home come 5pm. Though until I hear a confirmation of MIT's findings from another university/respected source, I hold on to my severe doubts about this.
Re:I have my doubts... but, (Score:5, Insightful)
"Though until I hear a confirmation of MIT's findings from another university/respected source, I hold on to my severe doubts about this.
MIT isn't really in the habit of making unsubstantiated claims of new discoveries. That's pretty much the purview of startup companies in need of funding and no-name universities looking for grants. MIT et al stake their reputations on their discoveries, and do not generally cry wolf.
Parent
Re:I have my doubts... but, (Score:5, Insightful)
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. In any case, you don't let any researcher (or institution) off the hook because of his popularity - what kind of science would that be?
Parent
You still have to be careful (Score:5, Informative)
For one, professors have to get grants to do their research, so they are sometimes given to overstatement to that end. They are, after all, only human which means that not all of them are honest. Also, some are simply unrealistic. They think they can do something, so they announce it, even though they have no idea how to get there, and then maybe never end up doing so. Finally sometimes shit just ends up being impossible. It looks good, seems like things will work, however in the end you can't make it happen. That happens with research. You can spend millions only to realise you've been down a dead end and there's nothing to be done about it.
I agree an announcement from a major university is much more credible than some startup, but don't think things out of universities aren't overstated at times.
Parent
Re:Vaporware (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I have my doubts... but, (Score:5, Informative)
Lets say your house needs 5000 W. To get through an 8 h dark period, you need 40 kWhr, or 136,000 BTU. That's roughly the energy in 2 lbs of hydrogen. To store that much hydrogen, you either need a balloon of 11 m^3 size, or you need a compressor that allows you to store the hydrogen as compressed gas (what costs energy to do) or to liquefy the hydrogen (what costs even more energy). Alternatively you can adsorb the hydrogen into certain alloys, but then you need to heat them to get the hydrogen back out, again ruining your energy balance, and driving up the cost.
This development can help with the development of a large scale hydrogen infrastructure, but there we're better of with natural gas (of which we're not running out anytime soon, and which has much less technological hurdles in storage).
Parent
Re:I have my doubts... but, (Score:5, Interesting)
Lets say your house needs 5000 W.
Let's not. That's more power draw than the total available service into most houses; and most houses don't exactly draw at max for 8 hours straight. Divide your numbers by 5, and you have a more reasonable estimate.
Parent
Re:I have my doubts... but, (Score:5, Funny)
And they say Americans are energy hogs?
Parent
Re:I have my doubts... but, (Score:5, Informative)
15 amps? 120 watts?
No, most houses have 100-200 amp service. At 120 volts. Which works out to 12000-24000 watts, peak. Average electricity consumption is right around 1 kilowatt, so the poster who said to divide by 5 was right.
Parent
Re:I have my doubts... but, (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think so. I just chose a vacuum cleaner at random from a retailer web site and it uses 2000W
Pro Tip: turn off your vacuum cleaner when you go to bed.
Parent
Re:I have my doubts... but, (Score:5, Interesting)
You pump water uphill during the day. Then at night, you let it fall downhill and generate electricity from that. We don't need fancy chemical tricks or storage mechanisms to make sporadic energy sources produce constant outputs.
Parent
Solar commuter cars won't work and here's the math (Score:5, Interesting)
Average commute is 15 miles.
Average electric car uses 300 watt/hours per mile (after recoving energy from braking)
Cost effective solar cells are 15%
Surface area of a car is 1.5 square meters.
Solar insulation is 1 kw/h for 5 hous a day (on average)
SOOO...
1.5 square meters * 15% * 1000 watts * 5 hours = 1125 watt/hours
The average commute is 15 miles * 300 watts-hours = 4500 watt/hours consumed.
Solar powered cars won't work until solar cell efficiencies are 50% or better.
Parent
Re:I have my doubts... but, (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually you can bike a lot further then you think. In addition it's not a waste of time in places with traffic congestion and you can travel faster by going a constant 15 mph as opposed to a stop and go 25mph. The roads would still exist obviously for an infinite amount of reasons but bike pathways and then offshoots of those pathways into may places of business would ease traffic and promote health and limit pollution.
Can you ride 30 miles to work in Texas without smelling so much like ass that you boss has to ask you to go home? Then, of course, ride 30 miles home where your wife has to hose you off before letting you in the house?
Oh, and then there is the rain, occasional ice, cold wind and so on that tends to inhibit normal people from riding bikes to work. Did I mention the hills? Lance Armstrong is from around here, ya know. Guess where he learned to ride up Mountains?
Of course, then we have to worry about how much stuff we can pack for the trip. First, we need a change of clothes so we don't smell like ass. Of course, we can't let them get wrinkled. Next, we need a towel to dry off with after we shower (assuming we have a shower at work). Of course, we'll need soap and shampoo to wash the sweat off. This doesn't include a notebook or briefcase that is required for work.
Now, of course, if we all lived downtown, it wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, because so many people want to live downtown so they can feel smug about riding their bikes to work that it has driven up the price of homes within bike distance of the jobs so much that it costs way too much for way too little living space. Sorry, but I don't make half a million a year, so I can't afford to live downtown.
So, forgive me if it seems as if I'm coming down on you. It's not just you, but everyone else who tells me how I too could ride my bike to work. But seriously, please, don't give that crap about how wonderful it is to live in a Utopian society where all our jobs are within 5 minutes of our homes. That's only the case in Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movies and does not reflect reality. Also, don't get me wrong, I would love it more people rode bikes to work. That would free up the free ways so I could get to work in less than an hour. Of course, if that were the case, all the freeways would still be jammed they would all be one lane government works.
Parent
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
First open sourcing solaris and now this.
Way to go Sun!
Benefits not just solar . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be a big win for any kind of "environmental" energy source (wind, waves, caged toddlers) that isn't always on.
Heck, it would make a great general-purpose home UPS and/or load leveler. If properly integrated, a home equipped with this would be less vulnerable to brownouts and blackouts. Local storage would make the job of power companies easier too.
Fingers crossed.
Re:Benefits not just solar . . . (Score:5, Funny)
>This would be a big win for any kind of "environmental" energy source (wind, waves, caged toddlers) that isn't always on.
Perhaps you've never seen a collection of caged toddlers. I assure you, they are always on.
Parent
If this is true... (Score:5, Interesting)
What are the implications for things such as water purification, desalination, etc?
Seems like a fuel cell "battery" is just the tip of the iceberg.
Re:If this is true... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thinking the same thing. I'm imagining a partially-self-powering desalination setup that cycles through seawater (filtered for particulates), extracts the hydrogen and oxygen, combines it in a fuel cell (which power is then cycled back into the system), then stores the resulting water for later drinking or irrigation.
Parent
Re:If this is true... (Score:5, Informative)
My experience is that when you try to use electrolysis on salt water you get NaOH and chlorine.
Parent
no more caustic substances needed! (Score:5, Funny)
Now we only have to solve the problem of storing a very flammable gas and possibly an incredibly powerful oxidizer!
This Quote made the story, (Score:5, Funny)
Scientist and Gamer...
Great. So when do we see it? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Reuters, the discovery of the a new catalyst for separating hydrogen+oxygen from water requires only 10% of the electricity of current methods
Great. So when do we see it? If it's anything like almost every other "alternative energy" advancement, it will either get snapped up by an oil-company owned holding company, or strangled by licensing fees/requirements/exclusivity deals.
Seriously- let's take a look back. Have there been any major advancements in solar energy technology in the last fifty or so years?
MIT = MIT Technology Licensing Office, and I used to work there. Six figure checks to professors were not uncommon...and it was the only part of the university that turned a profit.
It'd be really refreshing to see scientists develop a bit of altruism. It's the ultimate Open Source, and they'd be guaranteed decades, if not centuries, of good will and fame. That's worth a lot more than a few *possible* royalty checks.
Re:Great. So when do we see it? (Score:5, Insightful)
>> It'd be really refreshing to see scientists develop a bit of altruism. It's the ultimate Open Source, and they'd be guaranteed decades, if not centuries, of good will and fame. That's worth a lot more than a few *possible* royalty checks.
Altruism neither pays for the scientists' mortgages nor pays for all the equipment they use to develop their theories.
I'm all for smacking down ridiculously-long copyrights, invalidating silly trademarks or getting rid of obvious patents (one-click shopping?), but this is the _exact_ thing that patents is supposed to support. These scientists (and by proxy, their granteurs (sp?)) took a gamble on developing a technology and they were successful. They should be rewarded for that success like any other person in society. Without that potential for gains, there's no reason to even try.
Parent
Re:Gimme a break (Score:5, Interesting)
Large format NiMH batteries.
Marketed as the Panasonic EV-95. Or rather, not marketed. You can't buy them. The only vehicles they are currently in now (no pun intended) are three hundred some-odd Toyota RAV4-EVs.
If they are ever sold for use to power traction motors in an electric vehicle, Cobasys will slap Panasonic with an injunction to stop. And you can't buy them at any price other than in very large quantities, and the only people who can buy such large quantities are automakers. Some would say "Not a scam" but the licensing of the technology to exclude certain forms of transportation is REAL.
Who's Cobasys? Just the joint venture between the inventor of the battery, ECD Ovonics, and -- wait for it -- Chevron.
Here are a [investorvillage.com] few [autobloggreen.com] citations and examples. [wikipedia.org] Although things seem to be getting better, as they are being licensed in some hybrids now, and they may be expanded to more applications in the future...
Parent
ENVIRONMENTAL RECKLESSNESS (Score:5, Funny)
It is established FACT that Hydrogen is very difficult to contain. It leaks through the tightest seals like they were swiss cheese, and once free it races into the atmosphere and escapes into space.
This is not a major problem when all our hydrogen comes from the deep deposit hydrogen mines in Australia and Canada, but what if this new discovery hearalds an age of wholesail water mining? Do these so-called scientists not realise that we cannot have water without hydrogen? Have they forgotten that humans are 80% water? That water makes our crops grow and our fish swim?? Our life's blood could be literally floating away!
This irresponsible god-gaming may save us from peak oil today, but our grandchildren tomorrow will be facing PEAK WATER if these experiments are allowed to continue!
Write to your political representative today!