TimmyH
Solar Power Catalyst Breakthrough
August 6th 2008 02:45
Chemistry professors at MIT have made a major advance in inorganic chemistry which could lead to a cheap method of storing solar energy. David Nocera says the team has developed a catalyst that can generate vast amounts of oxygen and hydrogen from a glass of water, incredibly cheaply, by splitting water molecules.
The hydrogen that is produced can be used to power fuel cells and generate electricity in current coal fuelled power stations. Generally, solar power is limited by the fact that the cells only produce their maximum output for a few hours each day.
In the past, the only catalyst that could be used in this process was Platinum, which just so happens to be one of the rarest and most expensive materials in the world. But Nocera’s team has devised a catalyst that utilises a technology which might best be described as an unstable kind of Gore-Tex and is 90% as effective as Platinum in laboratory trials. If an industrial process can be developed using the Gore-Tex catalyst, it could pave the way for an abundance of solar-powered generators.
The process has been around for some time, and is known as artificial photosynthesis, so called after the chemical reaction that plants use to produce oxygen from sunlight and carbon dioxide. But up until now it has been too expensive to be industrially viable.
Karsten Meyer, a professor of chemistry at Friedrich Alexander University, in Germany says the study is simply groundbreaking. “Nocera has probably put a lot of researchers out of business. For solar power, this is probably the most important single discovery of the century."
Whereas the old Platinum catalyst was incredibly stable, the Gore-Text is difficult to control. But researchers are confident that although it will break down during the process, it will also be able to repair itself. Nocera came across the catalyst when doing lab trials to produce artificial photosynthesis. Generating oxygen from water has been one of the biggest challenges, but if this new catalyst proves effective on a large scale and this can be overcome, solar power could get a lot cheaper very rapidly.
The next major hurdle is to develop a material that absorbs sunlight and can subsequently power the water-splitting catalysts. Presently the process still requires an electrical impulse, but there are researchers working on the problem as we speak.
Nocera and other researchers are reportedly confident that the engineering problems involved in the overall process will be easily overcome once private investors see the benefits of getting in at the ground floor.
"The beauty of this system is, it's so simple that many people can immediately jump on it and make it better," says Thomas Moore, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Arizona State University.
The hydrogen that is produced can be used to power fuel cells and generate electricity in current coal fuelled power stations. Generally, solar power is limited by the fact that the cells only produce their maximum output for a few hours each day.
In the past, the only catalyst that could be used in this process was Platinum, which just so happens to be one of the rarest and most expensive materials in the world. But Nocera’s team has devised a catalyst that utilises a technology which might best be described as an unstable kind of Gore-Tex and is 90% as effective as Platinum in laboratory trials. If an industrial process can be developed using the Gore-Tex catalyst, it could pave the way for an abundance of solar-powered generators.
The process has been around for some time, and is known as artificial photosynthesis, so called after the chemical reaction that plants use to produce oxygen from sunlight and carbon dioxide. But up until now it has been too expensive to be industrially viable.
Karsten Meyer, a professor of chemistry at Friedrich Alexander University, in Germany says the study is simply groundbreaking. “Nocera has probably put a lot of researchers out of business. For solar power, this is probably the most important single discovery of the century."
Whereas the old Platinum catalyst was incredibly stable, the Gore-Text is difficult to control. But researchers are confident that although it will break down during the process, it will also be able to repair itself. Nocera came across the catalyst when doing lab trials to produce artificial photosynthesis. Generating oxygen from water has been one of the biggest challenges, but if this new catalyst proves effective on a large scale and this can be overcome, solar power could get a lot cheaper very rapidly.
The next major hurdle is to develop a material that absorbs sunlight and can subsequently power the water-splitting catalysts. Presently the process still requires an electrical impulse, but there are researchers working on the problem as we speak.
Nocera and other researchers are reportedly confident that the engineering problems involved in the overall process will be easily overcome once private investors see the benefits of getting in at the ground floor.
"The beauty of this system is, it's so simple that many people can immediately jump on it and make it better," says Thomas Moore, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Arizona State University.
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