IN June’s Energy, we reported on a new super-catalyst for use in hydrogen production from water. Here’s another.
A team of scientists at the world-famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology has found yet another formulation, based on inexpensive and widely available materials, that can efficiently catalyse the splitting of water molecules using electricity.
According to team leader Daniel Nocera, this could ultimately form the basis for new storage systems that would allow buildings to be completely independent and energy self-sustaining.
The systems would use energy from intermittent sources such as sunlight or wind to create hydrogen fuel which could then be used in fuel cells or other devices to produce electricity or transportation fuels as needed.
Nocera says that solar energy is the only feasible long-term way of meeting the world’s ever-increasing needs for energy, and that storage technology will be the key enabling factor to make sunlight practical as a main source of energy.
He has focused his research on the development of less expensive, more durable materials to use as the electrodes in devices that use electricity to separate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water molecules. By doing so, he aims to imitate the process of photosynthesis by which plants harvest sunlight and lock energy into chemical form.
Nocera pictures small-scale systems in which rooftop solar panels would provide electricity to a home, and any excess would go to an electrolyser – a device for splitting water molecules – to produce hydrogen, which would be stored in tanks.
When more energy was needed, the hydrogen would be fed to a fuel cell, where it would combine with oxygen from the air to form water and generate electricity at the same time.
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