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Solar Energy Breakthrough
How can we store the sun's energy and use it later when the sun isn't shining? That has been one of the biggest challenges facing the widespread implementation of solar power.
Now it appears that an answer may come from trying to duplicate what plants do.
A Masschusetts Institute of Technology professor has announced what he and his staff believe is a key breakthrough.
In a report from the MIT news service, Prof. Daniel Nocera said:
"This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years. Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."
Prof. Nocera is the senior author of a paper describing the discovery the July 31 issue of Science.
The new process mimics the photosynthesis performed by plants, using solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. These gases can later be recombined in a fuel cell. Then the fuel cell can power your home or charge your electric car -- any time you like.
If the discovery turns into a usable technology, we will be able to store the most abundant form of energy on the planet and use it when we want -- making home generation of electricity much more efficient.
It's thought the process could help us de-centralize the production of electricity and therefore reduce the need for costly and risky (nuclear energy) alternatives that rely on building huge electricity generators that can harm the environment.
Scientists will examine the details to see how the discovery stands up to scrutiny and how it can be applied. Policy-makers will look to see how such a new process might be used to address our urgent need to reduce carbon emissions.
But please excuse this non-scientist if I holler hooray right now. It is truly wonderful to hear of scientists working to solve a pressing global problem in such an environmentally-friendly way.
And indeed, science has done many wonderful things. But it has also been at the beck and call of big money far too often. You know the scenario: business and government call the tune by offering research dollars, and scientists dance. The result is that we often use our most brilliant minds to poison the earth or create new or more effective ways to kill people.
The University of California has been involved with nuclear weapons since the 1940s, and the distinguished public university system today continues to manage the labs that design and develop nuclear weapons.
Why do we use huge amounts of tax dollars, the prestige of a great university, the intellect and effort of some of our finest thinkers, and then create weapons of mass destruction? Do we really want our universities working to hone devices that kill civilians on a large scale and destroy cities?
In 2005, the Dalai Lama had this to say about the relationship of science and humanitarian values.
Purely from the scientific point of view, the creation of nuclear weapons is a truly amazing achievement. However, since this creation has the potential to inflict so much suffering through unimaginable death and destruction, we regard it as destructive. It is the ethical evaluation that must determine what is positive and what is negative [...]
We must find a way of bringing fundamental humanitarian and ethical considerations to bear upon the direction of scientific development, especially in the life sciences. By invoking fundamental ethical principles, I am not advocating a fusion of religious ethics and scientific inquiry. Rather, I am speaking of what I call "secular ethics" that embrace the key ethical principles, such as compassion, tolerance, a sense of caring, consideration of others, and the responsible use of knowledge and power -- principles that transcend the barriers between religious believers and non-believers, and followers of this religion or that religion. I personally like to imagine all human activities, including science, as individual fingers of a palm. So long as each of these fingers is connected with the palm of basic human empathy and altruism, they will continue to serve the well-being of humanity.
Science is connected to the rest of us. Scientists can choose to work on projects that benefit humanity -- especially if we pressure our government to fund those kind of projects.
So today is a day for rejoicing. This week's discovery by Prof. Nocera and his colleagues could help us use the huge abundance of sun energy in a way that can give power to people everywhere. We don't need to drill off-shore for oil or build new nuclear plants, we just need to keep supporting and encouraging scientists like those in Prof. Nocera's lab at MIT.
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is an educational charity that wants to encourage new US nuclear weapons policy. The Foundation is gathering one million signatures in a public education campaign, US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World -- An Appeal to the Next President of the United States. The text of the Appeal sets out seven prudent steps -- such as de-alerting nuclear weapons -- that would make the world safer. The names will be delivered to the White House on Inauguration Day January 20, 2009.
People can read the US Leadership Appeal and sign on at www.wagingpeace.org/appeal.
We also have an appeal to the University of California to get out of the nuclear weapons business. Please sign that also if you care about the issue. http://www.wagingpeace.org/menu/action/urgent-actions/appeal_to_regents/index.php Thank you.
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I am very pro solar, wind, ect......but this is one of the worst over-hyped solar articles I have ever read. There is no substance or context in relation to the title........"breakthrough"? I wish.
There are already many ways to store solar energy. Electrolysis is nothing new. And these specific cataylsts are not a breakthrough. Sure, they are an improvement to just plain old platinum. Every bit of efficency improvement helps.
I just hope oil and other comodities stay high so further development of new techs make economic sense to keep the science funded.
Joseph Romm explodes this press release, and goes over why this is such a silly way to store solar energy.
In short, losing 80% of the electricity that you store is a stupid way to store energy.
And we got far better options that lose less than 20%.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/4/13531/71482
Solar power is unlimited every second the Sun produces more energy than mankind has ever used in our entire time upon this planet...
I hope this is yet another step towards using what is the most sensible clean efficient energy source in our solar system...
There are other breakthroughs in Solar Energy such as the development of the blackest black in the universe for use in a new generation of solar panels using nano tubes from these only .17% of one percent to the sun light escapes or is reflected back these would be far more efficient Solar panels...
Of course there are already passive solar powered homes many in the southwest...
We hooked the wind turbine I helped put up to hydrogen generators or hydrogen batteries you could call them for energy storage...
Having lived in Woodstock NY for over 12 years we did a lot of work with solar and wind power long before it became as accepted as it is today...
Walter Russell, a 20th century American genius, displayed his Hydrogen engine for NORAD in the 1950's. He was friends with both Teddy Roosevelt and FDR. He told NORAD to call the President and tell him the great news. That the world could now have the clean, cheap and plentiful energy it needed to advance humanity. Nothing came of it because of greed. The last thing Big Oil wanted was a solution to this problem. They STILL don't. Russell has been stricken from the history books because he was so far ahead of his time. He was the true discoverer of plutonium. His book "Atomic Suicide" is a must read for anyone who thinks that nuclear energy is the answer. Nuclear energy will ensure the demise of mankind.
The problem never was to build hydrogen engines. We could have done that in the early 19th century... by burning hydrogen to heat the boiler of a steam engine.
The problem is to make hydrogen cheaply and efficiently. And that we simply can't.
Steven, you seem to be missing the point of the MIT research, which is they have a new super effeciet Steven, you seem to be missing the point of the MIT research, which is they have a new super efficient catalyst for producing hydrogen via electrolysis. This is an enabler for the hydrogen economy more than anything.
Note, to all those would be solar hydrogen home enthusiasts, do you really want a honking big tank of hydrogen in your basement given that it's incredibly explosive and quite prone to leaking? Remember we are talking about a pressurized tank capable of holding a winter's worth of energy. I'd think it would be best to leave this all to the power companies. Of course, if grid-tied solar installations were prevalent this technology would be useful to buffer the seasonal energy demands for the utility provider.
And now if you go over to theoildrum, you can read a well written and researched article which will explain to you why this research is anything but a breakthrough and does not even measure up to stuff we have for decades.
You are right about hydrogen storage, though. That's just another money looser.
What can I say, the press (and probably MIT's news service) exagerated things. Note, that I cleverly said "more than anything" which doesn't claim it's breakthrough.... in fact it casts doubt on the rest of the claims made in the press.
So the bait was to pretend this was some energy breaking techonolgy but to spin it into an anti nuclear agenda?
We need carbon free nuclear energy NOW, the world is at stake, isn't it? Disaster, melting, drip drip. Fire up nuclear plants now and achieve energy independence.
I think even Obama started to say the word nuclear power since his numbers started falling and he realized the radicalized left wing anti energy policy might lose him the White House.
Albert Einstein once said, something like, "you can not solve today's problems with the same kind of thinking that created them."
So here you are. not thinking ahead again-- wanting to build nuclear facilities but not having a sustainable plan for what to do with the waste.
If the US was serious about leading the world technologically-- it would be investing heavily in alternative energy sources.
First we have to vote someone literate into office.
"...So here you are. not thinking ahead again-- wanting to build nuclear facilities but not having a sustainable plan for what to do with the waste....."
Oh, bullsh$t. The Yucca Mountain repository is safe. When was the last time a mountain disappeared? That's what would have to happen for the wastes to enter the geological systems.
And with research over the next 50-100 years (a timeframe during which the repository would certainly be safe) we'll develop other options.
See Steven Crandell's Profile
No bait. The new process is real. Besides, I see renewable energy as the logical, safe and clean future for our electricity needs. Nuclear energy has not dealt with its principle problems: 1) what to do with its radioactive waste 2) the proliferation problem 3) the costs of construction and the time it takes to get a plant built. I am against nuclear energy as it is. So it is logical that I look for promising ways to use renewables.
The suggestion that it's like photosynthesis is disingenuous. It's a new catalyst for using electricity to split water. It's only applicable at the anode, so the systems that use it will still require a cathode of some existing type such as platinum. I'm dubious that the energy loss in electrical hydrolysis of water is all that concentrated at the anode, and that's the only loss that this can reduce.
It's also misleading to say that storage is "one of the biggest challenges facing the widespread implementation of solar power." Cost is in a class by itself as the biggest challenge. Storage contributes to cost if you want solar power to do more than augment the output of conventional power plants during peak air-conditioning hours. Some solar is used for that reason, but not a whole lot as would be the case if storage were that big a part of the barrier to it. And there are lots of storage technologies out there: pump water up a dam or tower, or gas into a chamber; use solar thermal generation with heat storage; let the batteries of people's plug-in hybrids earn them money by using off-peak electricity to charge and returning electricity to the grid during peak hours; and several other possibilities I'm not recalling.
Even for storage by making hydrogen, it's not just a matter of a better catalyst. There's a lot of infrastructure to change, and storing the hydrogen itself is difficult.
Well .... this is hardly news, using a medium like hydrogen as the 'battery' for storing the energy produced from an alternative source like solar or wind has always looked like a promising approach. All I see here is a technology that may increase the efficiency of converting solar to hydrogen.
But the major problem the author studiously avoids discussing here is that this process, on any large scale, would require tons of WATER .... water clean enough to run through your hydrogen/oxygen separation system without hopelessly clogging it.
And guess what's going to be in shorter supply than oil in the urban environments of our near future: water.
So ... this isn't a magic bullet. It might not even be *a* bullet.
Living in Seattle, you bet, I'm hoping for a day when I can collect rainwater for 8 months of the year in a big storage tank next to the garage, and then in the summer have solar panels on the garage roof convert that rainwater to hydrogen that can be stored and used for the rest of the year.
But that solution won't be available to someone in Las Vegas or Los Angeles, where they might be fighting each other for fresh water in the streets in the not too distant future.
The water use for androgen storage is minuscule compared to a nuke or coal plants water use. Water broken into hydrogen and oxygen has twice the energy per gallon of water as gasoline. It's also reusable after you burn it for energy.
Yes, hardly news.
Clogging the device used for hydrolysis?????? There is nothing to clog. You can use salt water (even from Puget Sound). The salt helps the current conduct better anyways. This is something we did in high school science class.........in Seattle. Did you skip that day??????
any one here think maybe if industry ran on perpetual motion..., maybe our problems would vanish?
I'm not from Missouri, but I feel like saying "show me."
Every week or so someone releases news about a new way to use hydrogen to generate power. I would love to see someone do more than talk about it.
In the paper I linked they have experimental data.
That's a pay site.
How efficient is it?
NanoSolar is the bonafide, tested, commercial solar breakthrough.
Solar DOES NOT NEED STORAGE till it is supplying 200% of the local areas peak power needs, or 100% of the grids peak power need. Air conditioning is electrical Peak load, which always happen at solar peak generation.
This isn't using hydrogen to generate power, it's using hydrogen to store power.
The technology already exists, the above story is about a major improvement on hydrogen fuel cell technology.
Google "fuel cell", see what you learn.
Nice column. Lots of good stuff in here. Decentralizing power is the answer to many of our problems, including the insidious political ones. Solar energy will save us, and our planet. But it won't be a walk in the park.
The oil companies are currently raking in massive profits to "gird their loins" for the imminent paradigm shift. Whatever companies or researchers make the real technical breakthroughs will be under tremendous pressure from the oil cartels to sell out their secrets, so that they can maintain the centralization and control of U.S. power distribution. Most of these companies are already being funded by Big Oil, but not all of them.
Let's hope the good guys win.
Wow, some genius at MIT discovered that the electricity from photovoltaic cells can be used the electrolyze water. I'm amazed. Amazed, I tell you.
This is truly a triumph for MIT. A triumph of public relations.
Of course, they don't mention that the efficiency of converting electricity into hydrogen and back again is only 10-20%. They also don't mention that solar concentration with thermal storage (e.g. a giant coffee thermos) can generate electricity throughout the night with less energy loss.
I especially love the part about mimicking photosynthesis! Where in this process are we fixating atmospheric carbon dioxide into larger organic molecules? Without the "synthesis" part, surely there is no photosynthesis going on.
Don't get me wrong, hydrogen isn't always a cruel hoax perpetrated on well-meaning environmentalists. I think that hydrogen makes a lot of sense for large ships that have to travel great distances off the grid without polluting fragile marine ecosystems, and it could also be used by the trucking industry, although I would much rather see overland freight travel by electric rail.
But the idea that we're going to base a whole new economy on incurring a tremendous efficiency penalty by transporting energy as a pressurized gas rather than passing electrons over conductive wire is patently absurd -- before even considering that we already have an electric grid.
Just because electrons came first doesn't mean hydrogen gets to be the sexy new technology. We got it right the first time.
be as pissed and cynical as you like. if i can store enough power from my solar panels to run my whole house on 1 gallon of water overnight, that's efficient enough for me. why does that make you mad? 1 gallon. common, harmless chemicals. room temperature. stores solar and microwind generated on site. no wilderness kill offs. no massive new powerlines. no eminent domain. reduced grid congestion. free. energy independence. sounds like a WIN to me.
See Steven Crandell's Profile
Thank you, Sheila. I think sometimes in our fear not to be misled we reason our way out of believing that anything can work. Jsarets' comment above obviously shows his interest and command of the subject -- but it is largely about using hydrogen on a large scale. The new MIT process has most promise, it strikes me, on a very small household scale. And yes, it may not turn into common technolgogy. But the point is that scientific endeavor is putting great focus into renewable energy and we are starting to see the benefits. What a refreshing way to counter the strong push towards nuclear power with its high initial costs and its inherent proliferation dangers.
Sheila, you are completely missing the point. As of today storing your solar energy is not necessary. No technology exists to make HOME storage of solar energy efficient that is not thermal. If you want to store heat to keep your house warm, that's fine. But storing electricity is out of the question if what you want is an EFFICIENT and ECOLOGICALLY RESPONSIBLE solution.
This paper changes absolutely nothing about that.
The process summarized in the MIT news release explains that the enabling feature of this technology is the use of catalysts to improve the conversion. Simple electrolysis is unfavorable for the reasons you mention, mainly inefficiency and heat loss and other technical concerns like acidity. The advances are noted from the news release:
"The key component in Nocera and Kanan's new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity -- whether from a 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 release doesn't say how much more efficient this method is than other industrial process but it runs at room temperature in pH neutral water. Both of these are technological advances and make home systems simple and realistic. Others should disregard the 10-20% efficiency noted by the previous poster: no source is cited by them and wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water) notes cited effieciencies over 40%.
I will disregard you post for falling for a poor piece of MIT research without analyzing the actual paper and comparing it to existing technology (which people who actually know the field have done).
If this pans out to be commercially feasible we could finally start a healing cycle for our planet.
it's not just nuclear energy that is wasteful and dangerous. giant CSP (concentrating solar) and wind farms are INCREDIBLY harmful to the ecosystem, killing off tens of thousands of acres for tiny outputs, sucking billions of gallons of groundwater (CSP) and requiring massive powerlines which lose 7-10% of the energy before they even get to the first substation. local, modular PV is over 10 times more effective per square foot than CSP, and can be done on small scales with great returns.
hurrah for MIT, hurrah for the blogger and hurrah for all the posters here who clearly understand that big energy monopolies are NOT the future, they are the past, and point of use renewables, combined with storage, smart grids and conservation tech are our only safe, affordable choice.
everyone who is in CA should know that AB 811 passed the legislature, so please pressure your cities and counties to provide loan funds (usually bond issues) for this NO RISK opportunity to use the property tax system for repayment/guarantees.
Also, we need 2 changes to AB 1920 before it passes - no caps on system sizes (so we can feed EXCESS INTO THE GRID AND GET PAID FOR IT), and FAIR FEED IN TARIFFS, like Germany, Spain, Japan, and 35 other countries, so please lobby hard, it's up for a CA vote in August...
Big Energy has done its damndest to "one step back" every step forward CA tries to make towards energy independence. LET'S PUSH BACK HARD!!!
Interesting, will this breakthrough change the world? Or be added to the long list of energy 'breakthroughs' that didn't live up to the hype? Only time will tell. But don't count your ergs before they are hatched.....
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