Posted on 08/01/2008 7:52:39 PM PDT by neverdem
Washington, Aug 1 : Researchers at the MIT have found a new way to store solar power, a major breakthrough in the search to use the sun and serve the Earth's energy needs in a clean and sustainable way.
Every hour, the sun pours down enough radiation to serve the Earth's energy needs for a year. The trouble is to store that energy cheaply and use it whenever needed.
Daniel Nocera and Matthew Kanan of the Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a process that will use the sun's energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen are recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity.
The theory was known, but the splitting had been enormously expensive and grossly inefficient till Nocera and Kanan showed the way.
The key component in their process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen from water; another catalyst produces hydrogen.
The new catalyst consists of the metal cobalt, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity - whether from a solar photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source - runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.
Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.
The new catalyst works at room temperature, in water that is neither acidic nor alkaline, and it's easy to set up, Nocera said. "That's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement."
"This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said Nocera, professor of energy at MIT.
"Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."
Earlier electrolysers that split water with electricity and are often used industrially are not suited for artificial photosynthesis because they are very expensive and require a highly alkaline environment.
James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.
"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," said Barber, the Ernst Chain professor at Imperial College, London.
"The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem."
--- IANS
True enough, although the tie-in to photosynthesis suggests that at some point this may not be a strict constraint.
What they're talking about here, though, is a way to store energy once it's generated ... or to convert it to something more portable (such as, for use in a fuel cell).
More specifically, fuel cells produce electricity from the recombination of hydrogen and oxygen. For example, the Space Shuttle gets all of its electrical power from fuel cells.
Do you lose mass of water over time? For example, if a liter is converted into H’s and O’s, and then you burn it, and it reforms back into 2 molecules of water, will you end up with a liter of water or will you have less?
In chemical reactions, you always have conservation of mass. Nuclear reactions are different, but you still have to have a total conservation of mass and energy even if the energy is lost as heat, etc. The loss of mass is converted to energy.
Are you saying that you end up with less than a liter of water because of the loss to energy?
No, not in just chemical reactions. There is no loss of mass in chemical reactions. The energy is in the chemical bonds that is released in redox reactions. If there are any more questions, I want to get paid. Wikipedia is a decent source for non-political stuff, but I like Answer.com, Ask, etc. Maybe I linked "How Stuff Works" in comment# 1 about solar power.
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