Posted on 03/16/2019 4:44:49 AM PDT by LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget
A research team in Belgium says its prototype panel can produce 250 liters of hydrogen gas per day
Solar panels are multiplying on rooftops and in gardens worldwide as communities clamor for renewable electricity. But engineers in Belgium say the panels could do more than keep the lights on—they could also produce hydrogen gas on site, allowing families to heat their homes without expanding their carbon footprints.
A team at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, or KU Leuven, says it has developed a solar panel that converts sunlight directly into hydrogen using moisture in the air. The prototype takes the water vapor and splits it into hydrogen and oxygen molecules. If it scales successfully, the technology could help address a major challenge facing the hydrogen economy.
Hydrogen, unlike fossil fuels, doesn’t produce greenhouse gas emissions or air pollution when used in fuel-cell-powered vehicles or buildings. Yet nearly all hydrogen produced today is made using an industrial process that involves natural gas, and this ultimately pumps more emissions into the atmosphere.
A small but growing number of facilities are producing “green” hydrogen using electrolysis, which splits water molecules using electricity—ideally from renewable sources such as wind and solar. Other researchers, including the team in Belgium, are developing what’s called direct solar water-splitting technologies. These use chemical and biological components to split water directly on the solar panel, forgoing the need for large, expensive electrolysis plants.
“Finding a way to create hydrogen in some easier or more efficient way is maybe a Holy Grail quest,” says Jim Fenton, who directs the Florida Solar Energy Center at the University of Central Florida.
KU Leuven sits on a grassy campus in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern region of Belgium. Earlier this month, professor Johan Martens and his team at the Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis announced their prototype could produce 250 liters of hydrogen per day on average over a full year, which they claim is a world record. A family living in a well-insulated Belgian house could use about 20 of these panels to meet their power and heating needs during an entire year, they predict.
The solar panel measures 1.65 meters long—roughly the height of a kitchen refrigerator, or this reporter—and has a rated power output of about 210 watts. The system can convert 15 percent of the solar energy it receives into hydrogen, the team says. That’s a significant leap from 0.1 percent efficiency they first achieved 10 years ago. (Separately, international researchers last year said they achieved 19 percent efficiency in producing hydrogen from direct solar water splitting.) “The most difficult part is getting the water out of the air.” —Tom Bosserez, KU Leuven
However, Martens’s lab was tight-lipped about its technology. Tom Bosserez, a post-doctoral researcher, declined to disclose any specifics, citing intellectual property concerns. He says only that the lab specializes in “catalysts, membranes, and adsorbents.”
“Using our expertise in this area, we were able to develop a system that is very efficient in taking water from the air and splitting it into hydrogen by using solar energy,” Bosserez wrote in an email. Asked about some of the engineering challenges they faced during a decade of development, he says, “The most difficult part is getting the water out of the air.”
Academic papers offer scattered clues about the technology, though Bosserez says their research “goes beyond what we publish.” In recent years, the engineers have studied the efficacy of a variety of materials, including porous, multi-junction silicon solar cells with “micrometer-scale pore dimensions”; thin-film catalysts made from manganese (III) oxide; and a poly (vinyl alcohol) anion exchange membrane involving a potassium hydroxide solution and nickel-based catalysts.
Martens says generally that his team is using “cheap raw materials” in lieu of precious metals and other expensive components. “We wanted to design something sustainable that is affordable and can be used practically anywhere,” he told VRT, a public broadcasting network in Belgium.
Researchers plan to field test their prototype at a house in the rural town of Oud-Heverlee. Hydrogen would be stored in a small, underground pressure vessel during the summer months, then pumped throughout the house during the winter. If all goes according to plan, Martens says the team could install 20 panels at the house, or build a larger neighborhood system to allow other families to use the “green” hydrogen.
Fenton, of the Florida Solar Energy Center, says it’s far too early to determine whether or when hydrogen-producing solar panels could become economically viable. The technology is still in the very early development stage, and—particularly in the United States—existing heating fuels such as natural gas are relatively cheap. However, as countries work to address climate change, and as more communities install local renewable energy infrastructure like rooftop solar, he sees a potential role for these hydrogen systems.
“If the application works out, it might lend itself very nicely to generating hydrogen that I could store and use for the heating of my house, for cooking, maybe run it in my fuel-cell car,” Fenton says. “It’s these futuristic kinds of opportunities. But it’s still something we need to prepare for.”
Don’t much care about the green stuff. But I could see using this in my off the grid cabin someday. :)
Just make sure the compressor runs on 110VAC or has its own generator.
re: “I am very familiar with zero point energy theory.”
No.
That’s not it.
Read up ...
Forget about using hydrogen to cook, power cars, or to heat. Hydrogen doesn’t like to be contained, and loves to escape through even the tiniest of holes, leading to a fire hazard.
In order to use it in a car or for any other purpose, you have to store it at high pressure, making it even more likely that the hydrogen will escape through tiny holes.
There’s a serious error your rationale. That is, that you’re using any at all. Real climate science is done by flailing your arms in panic and screaming that the world will end in 12 years. Does anyone really know what the effect of increased CO2 will be, assuming that humans are even responsible for it? Not for certain. There have been past eras when CO2 levels were much higher than today, and plants flourished in greater abundance, since they feed on it. There’s something missing from liberal “climate science”: experimentation and the resulting empirical data. All they have is theoretical models. They usually don’t work if that’s all there is.
re: “That is, that you’re using any at all. Real climate science is done by flailing your arms in panic and screaming that the world will end in 12 years. “
I know - I know. Shame on me!
My bad ... lol
Apparently you lack basic knowledge of Engineering/cost of materials/Energy required to compress GAS.
Please Step away from that Ganga you have been smoking
Which also composes -90% of greenhouse gas.
Ban growth of atmospheric water vapor.
Bills would still be high, they would just up the portion for transmission charges and such. My actual power usage is about 40 bucks a month, the bill is over 300.
This is a compilation of notes I made while researching Mills history and the Hydrino - don’t know where I found the first excerpt, it sheds some light on who is bankrolling his operation though.
Threats to [failure to obtain] the hydrino patents could jeopardize Morgan Stanley Dean Witter’s plans to underwrite BlackLight’s estimated billion dollar initial public offering. And some of BlackLight’s backers say they’re offended when portrayed as dupes or coconspirators.
“If I wanted to gamble, I’d fly to Vegas,” says Rick Barry, whose Eastbourne Capital Management and its principals invested $5 million in BlackLight after what he describes as “detailed” due dilligence by him and PacifiCorp. “I don’t think the risk [with Mills] is science fraud. It’s can he engineer a device and can he protect his intellectual property? I thought we were safe on the latter until this started to unfold.”
Along with PacifiCorp, electric utility Conectiv has invested in BlackLight. Tyco International inherited a sliver stake in the company through its purchase of Amp Incorporated, a leading producer of electrical connectors. Individual backers are among the Who’s Who of the business establishment. They include a former chairman of Morgan Stanley and a former president of PaineWebber. Board members include Dr. Shelby Brewer, a former top Department of Energy nuclear official, and Aris Melissaratos, former director of Westinghouse’s Science and Technology Center.
https://www.villagevoice.com/1999/12/21/quantum-leap/
Times are tough on Robert Mills Sr.’s 91-acre grain farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania. “This year is very, very bad,” he confides. “I’m glad the kids got out.”
His eldest, Robert Jr., has a water well drilling business, his daughter Raeleen is a massage therapist. And his younger son, Randell, recently bought a 53,000-square-foot space satellite manufacturing plant near Princeton, New Jersey, from Lockheed Martin. He then stocked it with millions of dollars of high-tech gear. Here the younger Mills plans to overturn quantum theory as it’s been understood for decades.
Randell Mills, a Harvard-trained medical doctor who also studied biotechnology and electric engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he’s found the Holy Grail of physics: a unified theory of everything. A central part of Mills’s theory explains the basis of the traditional, and paradoxical, “duality” concept of the electron as both a particle and a wave with a model where electrons are charges that travel as two-dimensional disks and wrap around nuclei like fluctuating soap bubbles. He calls them “orbitspheres.”
http://rexresearch.com/millsbrillight/mills.html
“Sounds like you’re still wedded to big-plant, central generation with transmission and distribution networks, albeit with “superconductivity”.”
Not at all. I am not wedded to anything but my wife.
The big grid companies already use superconductive storage but because of the temps it needs to be kept at it is very very expensive.
What I would love is a thorium pebble bed reactor with a helium turbine with the whole unit the size of a fridge that could sit out in the garage.
You mean like the FAKE NEWS MEDIA did some years back using a GM Pick-up.
re: “What I would love is a thorium pebble bed reactor ...”
Another “stranded asset” in a few years ...
You need to do your due diligence. It took me a year to come to grips with Mills and the Hydrino ...
You know what they say: “A word to the wise ...” and all that.
Orders? Isn't it about the same? The last numbers I saw from pro-solar types say that it's 8 watts into electrolysis to get enough H2 to produce 1 watt.
It's not a great idea for most people.
There is something terribly wrong with their math. Solar energy reaching the earth's surface averages about 150 watts per square meter for a panel always mounted perpendicular to the sun (when it's up), averaged over a year*. Assuming their panel is a meter wide, and always pointed at the sun, it makes sense that the power INPUT to the panel is 'about 210 watts' per day, not its output. At 15 percent efficiency, that would give them 32 watts per day per panel. Twenty panels would give them 640 watts per day, on average. That's about a dime's worth of electricity per day. Not very many people could heat and electrify their homes for three bucks a month worth of electricity.
* Wikipedia - "Sunlight" - "The World Meteorological Organization uses the term "sunshine duration" to mean the cumulative time during which an area receives direct irradiance from the Sun of at least 120 watts per square meter.[1] Other sources indicate an "Average over the entire earth" of "164 Watts per square meter over a 24 hour day"
I'm all for innovation.
But it's always comes down to cost, efficiency, and convenience.
I hope the big breakthroughs come quickly.
Ummm the cost would be the compressor. The compressor would run on hydrogen.
The cost of compression would be the cost of the compressor amortized out over the compressed gas. The 8.3 kWh/kg of hydrogen energy cost would not be there.
You beat me to it. Hindenburg ping.
Now they are going to want to cover everyone else s property with their collectors.
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