With Artificial Photosynthesis, A Bottle of Water Could Produce Enough Energy To Power A House

wow, thats extremely impressive. if it delivers on the promise, it'll be quite revolutionary. wonder how much water is used in that 4 hours required to generate 30kwh?

also, is it just fresh water? will it work with salt water? how filtered does it need to be? im assuming you cant just hook up a line to the creek out back. imo time to go get some of that moon water!

I wonder if beneficiaries of the money are all required to make political promotional videos like this one? It seems so with the multiple references to the stimulus plan, chu etc. Pitiful political manipulation of public opinion. Politicians leave the science to the scientists kick in some money then shut up and quit trying to take credit for innovation created by someone else paid for by someone else.

That being said I like this idea. The light from a flashlight shining on the catalyst obviously producing hydrogen even from a low energy source was impressive. Economics of scale should bring down the price sharply and hydrogen storage on a low pressure system ought to be easy enough to implement. This is the kind of thinking we need more of in this country. The kind we used to do all the time.

that video didn't explain much.

how expensive is the catalyst to produce? is it expended in the process of splitting the water, if so, how quickly?

Photosynthesis is very efficient. I saw a lot of ideas over the years that didn't pan out but this one is cooler than cool-aid, if the promise survives the hype...

Ron Bennett

deegeezee- A catalyst, by definition, is something which facilitates a reaction but is not used up by the reaction. So assuming it is a stable compound then you wouldn't need to replace it.

This really is an awesome idea! Think of the potential uses. Not just for your home. The mental image I get is a rack of water bottles on top of an electric car. Or think about taking a small unit camping with you, or carrying one around to power all the electronic gadgets we're accumulating. And of course providing power in the third world.

If everyone had these think of all the money and materials that would be saved by not having to maintain a power grid.

@Mycellium

Yeah, how dare the proffesors getting grants from the tax payers comment on how the tax payers have invested well.

Converting sun to energy is acomplished in many ways. We could already split water with sunlight via a photovoltaic cell and eletrolysis. If this process cuts out the electricity stage, thats more efficient. If its more efficient than a photovoltaic, we'll start seeing aquariums on the roofs of houses. Sweet.

This is really cool, BUT why did take 20 years? Is catalyst really hard to make?

Something smells a little fishy. But I hope it works.

This is absolutely meaningless without stating either efficiency or how much energy is required to produce the 30 kilowatt-hours.

Splitting H20 with solar (even with a catalyst) is nothing new or even newsworthy.

Even the video is devoid of any real information.

Concept sounds fine and hope it works but .....

... unless I'm completely going blind the source article from this does not state how long it takes to produce any amount of electricity using THIS technique.

"Using the electricity generated by a photovoltaic array five meters by six meters, Nocera claims he can split enough water in less than four hours "to store enough energy for the average American home" for a day, a little more than 30 kilowatt-hours."

Photovoltaic cells are photovoltaic cells NOT "a new photosynthetic process" being funded by the US government.

... suggest the cut-and-paste editorial left a vital point out.

42.

Consider this. If this were a be all end all awesome source of energy, imagine how anyone at all who had invested in oil would react. If This were to overtake the energy market, what would happen to all those poor billionaires providing jobs and what-not?

Hmph. After watching the video, you can easily replicate this experiment through a 9 volt battery and two carbon rods. These rods, hooked up to the battery and dipped into water, will produce hydrogen and oxygen, if only for a short amount of time. All they've done here is make it where the sun is providing the battery.

cool technology, but I don't think this is really new. The basic model is to add energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Store the hydrogen, then recombine it with oxygen to get electricity; hence a hydrogen fuel-cell. Where do yo get the energy to split water? You can: use coal, water damns generators, paddle a stationary bike, or use solar panels (like here).

One problem. I wonder if EPA will allow to “drill” for domestic water will we be dependent on some foreign nation for the water imports? Remember when farmers in California were denied water because some fish need it? Politician will make stupid laws that you won't even be able to collect rain with buckets.

The guy has been at this for 25 years, why is the stimulus money the main driver? Ohh wait a minute, 2010 – 25 = 1985, is the stimulus money from 1985 crisis that's finally paying off?

Totally unclear what's going on here - does this catalys work directly with light and water, or are solar panels needed to create electricity first?
If this is simply catalyst + light + water = Hydrogen fuel then that's remarkable - if you still need electricity then it's of little interest.
NB Photosynthesis is already used to produce bio-fuels (even fossil fuels were created via photosynthesis)

I checked the source, and it would seem that
1. It does use electricity to split the water
2. Apparently he decided to use a regular solar panel to provide the electricity
3. This method claims to generate more energy from the hydrogen and oxygen it produces than it requires to split the water.

I have read many miracle proposals. I hope that this one is true. Time will tell.

Iceland's been making hydrogen from water for a few years now....oil companies will make this tech "dissappear" for America.... sadly...

I did appreciate the dedicated Yoda voice though.

Quote SciAm: "Using the electricity generated by a photovoltaic array five meters by six meters, Nocera claims he can split enough water[...]".

In other words, the process is electrolysis, and has nothing to do with any kind of photosynthesis.

What really makes the big difference here is that Nocera had the idea of using a cobolt based catalyst on the electrodes, which seems to boost the output of hydrogen to unprecedented levels.

A 6 meters by 5 meters solar array gives an output of approximately 4.5kW, which would mean that for each produced kW of hydrogen, the process uses 0.6 kW of electricity. Which is not bad a bad yield, not a bad yield at all.

This isn't photosynthesis; it's based on proven science which has been available for years, such as the DIY plans available at www.zchs.org/NRG though the $4M version seems to offer improved efficiency. That's all well and good, but given that both water and sunlight are essentially free, is there any real advantage in paying more?

Is there a peer-reviewed paper on this available to read, or is this being announced in the fashion of "cold fusion"?

The process of using photovoltaics to split water into hydrogen and oxygen is not a new concept. Texas Instruments was doing this back in the early 80's using a hydrogen bromide solution in a closed loop system involving a solar panel made up of tiny silicon beads with P-N junctions adhered to a substrate (sort of like sand on sand paper). The beads of silicon were flooded with the hydroden bromide solution and when exposed to sunlight the hydrogen was separated from the solution then recombined in a fuel cell to produce electricity. I don't know what happened to the idea - probably some oil company bought the patent and killed the future of this technology.

Why does Dan Nocera think this is "photosynthesis"? It's a photovoltaic process, not photosynthesis!

Well, I think one key feature has to have been omitted.

The waste product of the fuel cell is: water. It seems that, in theory, you could circulate the water produced in the fuel cell back to the solar collection apparatus. Since there is a constant input of solar energy, no conservation laws would be violated.

It might be, that a bottle's worth of water is introduced into a closed system, preventing the need for a massive water distribution system, and unreasonable amounts of filtering.

If true, such a system would be blissfully independent and extremely portable. I could see the military applications of lift-and-go power stations making government investment likely.

Promising.

Often times, when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is not true.

With that in mind, pay special attention to 1:04 when the speaker makes an interesting facial gesture by quickly looking down in a split second after he claims he is bringing this to a "real live technology". Hopefully it is true that he is bringing this to a live tech, but the facial gesture he made COULD indicate a guilty conscience by looking down or being deceitful. I am not saying he is being deceitful in these claims, just pointing out what he did at 1:04. It also could be that something caught his attention on the floor, so he looked down.

I've invested and lost money in similar low-cost energy technologies like this and they just never seem to make it to market, so I am skeptical whenever I hear this type of stuff. And when a guy looks down for a split second after claiming to eventually bring this to market, my BS detectors start going off. And again, I could be completely wrong, and I probably am.

If they got together with the makers of the Bloombox, then all of our energy problems would be solved.

Anybody remember the movie Chain Reaction with Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman? This sounds like the exact same thing to me. Will the technology be suppressed just like it was there? Or are we better than that now? I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that NO power company really wants this technology to hit the market.

When I was 12, I used a battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen by creating two anodes from cutting up another battery.

If you want to do it yourself, here's how to do it. And any 12 year old can do this.

www.wikihow.com/Make-Oxygen-and-Hydrogen-from-Water-Using-Electrolysis

If you want a power source, hook up a solar panel to it.

Someone gave this guy 4 million dollars to do the same thing I did when I was 12.

People's stupidity never ceases to amaze me. As another poster said, photosynthesis is very inefficient. It is one of the reasons trees grow so slowly.

Compare the speed of tree growth to moving a car, for example.

You could use photosynthesis to generate energy in other ways. You could plant a tree seed in the ground, water it for 20 years (or just let it grow if you are in an area where it rains). Then cut it down and burn it to generate energy.

You wouldn't have to worry when it was dark out because the tree would be "storing" the energy at night.

That isn't exactly going to be solve anyone's energy problems.

Must be nice to get millions of dollars over decades to screw around with "inventions" like that.

"A 6 meters by 5 meters solar array gives an output of approximately 4.5kW, which would mean that for each produced kW of hydrogen, the process uses 0.6 kW of electricity. Which is not bad a bad yield, not a bad yield at all. "

Not bad, merely impossible. Generating more power than
the sun is providing is just not going to happen.

At best, stored hydrogen can act like a battery to store
the energy for overnight use. But here is another wacky
idea ... why not just use a battery?

THIS IS REALLY A GREAT IDEA, I'M JUST CONCERN IF THE CATALYST
LEAKS INTO OPEN WATER. WHAT DANGER DOES IT POSE TO OUR AQUATIC ECOSYSTEM?

@fche There is something you don't seem to get. The water is already a battery with the stored energy of hydrogen. So essentially you have a "free" battery from the water tap. You use .65kw/h of energy to free 1kw/h of energy from the water WHICH ALREADY HAS THE ENERGY. Sure, you are right you're not creating energy... it's just like using oil... but instead of burning oil you're burning hydrogen. btw, .35 (the extra energy produced over th original .65 needed for the catalyst) is 350 watts for an hour. In four hours this produces 350 watts * 30 = 10500 watt hours. and for examples sake "A heater, rated at 1000 watts (1 kilowatt), operating for one hour uses one kilowatt hour (equivalent to 3,600 kilojoules) of energy."

This is complete fraud and deception. Instead of storing the energy in batteries they are converting it to hydrogen and oxygen. The average solar radiation arriving at the top of the Earth's atmosphere is roughly 1,366 watts per square meter. 4 hours of "peak" solar insolation is 5,464 watts. Multiply that by the quoted 6 meters by 5 meters solar array and you have 163,930 Watt Hours. The claimed 30KWh of energy stored in hydrogen and Oxygen is only produced at 18.3% efficiency. We are still limited to the cost and expense of the photovoltaic Solar panels.

Meaning you still need to pay the $20,000 for the Solar panels, Plus all the expenses for the Catalytic process and equipment, Hydrogen and Oxygen storage Tanks. You can dump the Oxygen unless you want containers of rocket fuel on your residence.

So in reality this is nothing more then combining expensive photovoltaic panels on your roof and using electrolysis you convert the electricity into hydrogen. Big deal! It's been done for many decades already. The efficiency is still limited to the solar cells.

To heat a home you can burn the Hydrogen but to convert it to electricity you would need a fuel cell dropping that 18.3% efficiency to 9-12% efficiency. Sure you could use an engine and generator setup to burn the hydrogen but we know the Carnot cycle limits efficiency just like it does in todays vehicles.

This technology is already decades old and offers nothing promising.

Water is the leftover "ash" from a previous liberation of energy resulting from a combination of hydrogen and oxygen. Energy must be added to split it into two gases again before the reaction can be repeated. Unless the Laws of Thermodynamics are repealed more energy will be required to split the gases than can be harvested from the re-combination.

I too, hate these type of videos...that are long on hype and short on facts.

But, all arguments aside (see previous comments..), the race for cheaper solar power can simply be defined as: The continuing search for cheaper arrays. I.E., original cost (sq meter), plus maintenance over a 20 year (or so) span, divided by kw per sq meter. (whether or not the "KW's" come directly from panel or an intermediate step...)

Here is the succinct quote about Catalytix, from National Geographic: "The idea is old, but last year Daniel Nocera, a chemist at MIT, reported what may be a breakthrough: a new catalyst that makes splitting water much cheaper."

And... I assume the "photovoltaic array" of "6 m x 5 m" IS the direct producer of hydrogen, not merely "a source of electricity..." Otherwise, the use of "photosynthesis" and "catalyst" would make no sense.

Also, those who pointed out that "batteries do this.." ignore the fact that low pressure gas storage is CHEAP!! Batteries are not. And batteries only deliver electricity...not a burnable fuel.*

So, brothers and sisters, give the guy a break...but pursue cost figures relentlessly!!

Pat

I recently read that solar cells can be 95% efficient. As I understand his device, the catalyst lowers the potential energy barrier so that it is easier to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Another way would be to bring in low-density low-speed-of-light energy from a hyperspace co-dimension where the speed of light is 1 meter/second. The binding term of the electron with the proton in hydrogen involves an electrostatic term and a quantum angular momentum term. The latter depends on the square of the speed of light because one is embedded in Planck's constant h and the other is part of the term. By lowering the speed of light to 1 m/s, the angular momentum term becomes small and the electron enters the proton. The proton then decays into 300 electrons. The hyperspace energy could be used to lower the potential energy barrier even further by weakening the quantum binding between the hydrogen and oxygen molecules of water.

JohnStClair, but don't forget the effect of the magnetized quantum matrix, which spins in a right-handed tensor nanotube. That multiples the gas exponentially. Better than beans.

Fleischmann–Pons any one?

Aren't most solar cells already more efficient than their biological counter parts?

@JohnStClair

It would be awesome is solar cells could reach 95% efficiency but it's just not going to happen in our lifetimes. Most new home installations are in the 15% range. We have developed 40% efficiency panels but the cost would be in the millions for just one home. Solar will play a huge part in home energy very shortly. It's estimated that Solar use will jump 5-8 fold in the next 10-15 years alone as they are just now becoming cheaper then electricity off the grid.

Also the comment that the hydrogen can be burned to heat a home is true but electric hot water heaters and electric home heaters are already 98-99% efficient. Li-Fe-PO4 batteries are already 98% efficient, none flammable and are quickly dropping in price. So conversion to hydrogen is just another giant inefficiency to add to a solar setup and burning it to heat is another loss in efficiency. Converting it back into electricity cuts the efficiency in half again.

Bring it on!

If it sounds to good to be true:
Well I had an idea that sounded that way even to me, so I built it, and it worked. Filed disclosure documents (1970's to get a patent) and had 2 guys in suits show up (cant say were they were from oil company or otherwise because I don't know) telling me it would disrupt the global economy (essentially free power), I would not drop the patent, then they asked how many kids I had I said 2, then they opened their coats and told me I had 2 good reasons to 'drop it', so I did.... and have never made another one.
However, I have been using solar and wind for most of my life (in my 50's) and no such problems, nor any problems from the local utility company.
With global oil reserves diminishing, logic would say the oil companies would have little objection to reduced demand, so they could keep operating over a longer time span.
Putting people out of jobs?
The $ not spent on grid power, I spend in my local community on 'things' I want, this creates jobs.
I make my own wind turbines, they are small, and more than one also makes 'starting' to use them, faster than buying one large one.
If in an area with good sun, I'd use mostly solar (I'm 90% wind 10% solar) but this application would have its own applications, and I dont think it wise to wait for any ONE solution, but to think in terms of diversification.
Nor to 'wait' for decades for the perfect universal solution, because when people start buying alternative energy products you create the demand thus also encourage innovations in the industry.
I would like to see many of the questions asked by the above posters though, answered regarding this 'innovation' in technology, and if "time will tell" well that's why I got into (producing my own power with) wind and solar over 30 years ago, I got tired of waiting.
Good thing I did, because so far, its saved me around $148,000 USD (that I put back into my local economy).
So other innovations may come along, but don't forget an expense is also, in how long your willing to wait for that cheaper product.

This technology is exciting. However, I'd like to see one other technology enhancement - on this website. I use Firefox 3.6 (the latest version). However, the YouTube video is only visible if someone uses Microsoft Internet Explorer. I'd guess that 99.9% of all websites in the country are coded to be cross-compatible between both browsers. And, it would be nice to see PopSci.com join the 21st Century as well.

@AlicWest, nice catch!
Often times companies advertise site software as being xhtml, this page 'says' xhtml1.0 even in FF, but checking it at the w3c shows "this page" even as xhtml1.0 has 236 Errors, 69 warning(s).
Often times... such programs as used on this site, sell themselves as xhtml, likely expecting those who purchase or use it, to have no clue about code, nor even how to check it for accuracy.
Background: I've been designing for several years (I am a software designer) xhtml1.1 valid (they have to be 100% error free or wont load in F.F.) e-commerce sites.
Nice catch!

I want one of these in my home. Charging my electric car at home or refueling it with hydrogen (either way works) would seize most travels to the gas pump. Is there a hybrid car that runs on electricity and hydrogen, rather than gas and hydrogen or gas and electricity? If so, this technology would be one, if not the best source of energy around! and it's at home. Really cheap, yet, productive.

"Photosynthesis is very efficient."

The quantum efficiency on small, isolated parts of the photosynthesis process is really quite irrelevant.

Photosynthesis has TERRIBLY poor efficiency when you consider the amount of sunlight that makes it into biomass. It's much less than 1% for most plants, about 0.1% for trees and a couple of percent for the most efficient single celled algae.

Plants are not optimized for energy efficiency. Plants are optimized for nutrient efficiency, for water efficiency and a lot of other kinds of efficiency, but energy efficiency is not one of them.

Mycellium, why don't you just go back to watching FOX 24/7, and leave your political biases out of a discussion of technology. There was no 'political content' to this message, simply a placard with a quote from the Secretary of Energy. After all, this project was funded by ARPA-E, with money from the Department of Energy.

@Technologist

"The claimed 30KWh of energy stored in hydrogen and Oxygen is only produced at 18.3% efficiency. We are still limited to the cost and expense of the photovoltaic Solar panels."

That was true last month. This month, there was an announcement of a technique for adding silicon nanowires to the surface of solar cells.

There had already been work on non-reflective coatings, but this goes a quantum leap farther. If it pans out, we could have solar cells that absorb more than half of the energy of sunlight.

Now, THAT would be interesting.

As for this article, the title is misleading. "A bottle of water could produce enough energy to power a house".

Blah. The water has nothing to do with producing energy.

But, an effective catalyst to overcome the electrolysis inefficiency, that's big.

I'd heard rumors, but this is the first (even vague) demonstration.

You can see in the video, his prototype has a catalyst in a filter pouch, with one of the electrodes inside it.

The flashlight, BTW, is just so the camera can see the bubbles. It has nothing to do with actually MAKING the bubbles.

If he's actually come up with a safe (-ish) electrolysis catalyst, then any source of renewable energy, wind, solar, etc, can be stored as hydrogen with some reasonable efficiency.

And the Bloom Box (or any SOFC) can convert that back to electricity and hot water when you need it.

It's finally starting to come together, guys. Better solar cells, temporary hydrogen storage in nanofoams, and fuel cells to convert that to energy when we need it.

@AlecWest

"However, I'd like to see one other technology enhancement - on this website. I use Firefox 3.6 (the latest version). However, the YouTube video is only visible if someone uses Microsoft Internet Explorer."

It's a Flash video. You have to have Flash installed to view it.

If you don't like Flash, join the IHateFlash club, the dues are free -- and Apple is a charter member.

@LaHu

" Energy must be added to split it into two gases again before the reaction can be repeated. Unless the Laws of Thermodynamics are repealed more energy will be required to split the gases than can be harvested from the re-combination."

Correct.

However, electrolysis has been disappointing in the past because it uses SO MUCH power to get a little output of hydrogen.

There was something fishy there. Like driving your car with the emergency brake engaged; doesn't take long to realize there's something dragging you back.

Sure, you NEVER get as much energy out as you put in, that's impossible.

Entropy prevents a 1:1 result.

But this research suggests that a better approach will avoid some of that uphill effort in producing Hydrogen.

Imagine, just for a moment: we produce 10KwH of electricity, store it as hydrogen, and end up getting 8KwH of electricity back plus some hot water.

That would be fine. You pay a penalty to store the energy for later use.

No big deal, and we can use hot water too.

@AlecWest, Jkirk3279 is correct, I have F.F. but cant watch the video due to being in semi remote Alaska on dialup speed access (it would take me around 3 hours to load it so I could watch it), that said, thanks all for the comments on it so I have somewhat of a text version ;)

I just love the comment (above) about hyper-space, where the speed of light is 1 meter/sec. And...apparently, the proton disintegrates into 300 electrons.

Now, last I heard, the proton was mass equivalent to about 1800 electrons. So, the author doesn't really go far enough. Of course, the fact that the nuclear disintegration of the proton might generate the energy equivalent of 1500 (1800-1500)electrons in high energy X-rays...might be a problem.

But, let's first focus on slowing light down to the 1 meter/sec speed. Should be doable about 50 years after we create workable, sustaining fusion energy. I have noticed NASA fronting an appropriation to create a new, outer space cyclotron ring about 155 light years in diameter. That should test the notion of proton disintegration. Watch your lights blink when they turn it on.

Meanwhile, we should all be on the look-out for slow moving photons (virtual ones, that is...) and package them up. E-mail me for instructions and mailing containers..(I have a deal with the Post Office...)

Makes sense to me...

Cap'n Kirk, commander, StarTrek...

"Warp speed 6, Scotty!!"

Well...I didn't mean to be too sarcastic. In all fairness, alternate universes (where the speed of light is different) would have incredibly different physical laws/effects.

Of course, "life as we know it" would probably not be part of those universes.

Or, alternatively, the inhabitants might be desparately trying to INCREASE the speed of photons (if they have them) to say, 3.0 x 10-6 m/sec. They may be doing that in order to avoid the projected death, 4004 years in the future, of their universe!!

Just sign me:

Cap'n Nemo, commander of the Nautilus.

"take here down Rasmus!!"

It is a break-through, just very misleading.

How does photosynthesis even apply hear? After quick research on this, the idea is to use solar panels to produce the energy needed to power the electrolysis... not to directly make chemical energy as photosynthesis does.

Solar panels are only about 10% efficient anyway. Not to mention they take so much energy to produce and barely pay the energy back over their life time.

So his idea of solar powered houses wouldn't work unless serious break-throughs are made in solar cell technology (this isn't solar technology at all).

On the plus side however... if he has discovered a super-efficient way of producing hydrogen using electricity (electrolysis) as he claims, then this is still really big. A more practical application would be to build several nuclear power plants near a vast water supply (the ocean or massive river) and use the electricity generated to mass produce hydrogen and use that to fuel our vehicles.

We have the technology to run vehicles on hydrogen... the problem is that hydrogen cannot be produced as economically as oil can be pumped out of the ground and processed into gasoline and diesel.

Bottom line... if this electrolysis trick of his is above 50% and the catalyst is easy and cheap to produce, then this is still pretty serious stuff.

This was mostly an advertisement for alternative energy funding. I didn't see any real science. We've all run those 8th grade science experiments where we use electrolysis to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. I saw, I think 30 watts, after 4 hours of processing. But what was the energy used to make that yield? I missed that in his discussion.
I'll get really excited about this when I see a paper, peer reviews of that, then others being able to repeat the experiment in labs around the world. After the global warming "science" fiasco I want to see the math and then the science before I get too excited.

I confess I found the comments and all the scepticism more interesting than the article. PopSci, try and create a wiki based on the article, all comments so that a clearer picture can emerge. In future when you commission these articles and pay writers include a clause in contract that they will also moderate and answer all comments for 3 months. The days of one way " we know this, read this and admire us" kind of journalism are over. Use technology and hrespect the readers and their knowledge. Even if they get much of it from PopSci itself or Fox news.

As to the technology, I think it is right to be investing in creating more efficient artificial photsyntehsis and all new manner of energy storage an creation. Life on this planet will be long, much longer than oil reserves run out. So what choice we have but try and create new energy sources. One of these crazy ideas some day will change the future. When we look at these technologies let us think 3010 and not 2020.

The video is nothing short of a commercial for the Stimulus Bill! The technology will be wonderful if it ever comes to fruition, but don't lure people to watch the video by stating that "Nocera describes the process". Don't try to veil a commercial by pretending that it is something else! If he does as good of a job of developing the technology as he does in describing the process it was a waste of 4 million dollars!

@BRE--the guy got $4 million from the gov't, why shouldn't he do a commercial for that cash? As he explains, ARPA-E is spending money on lots of different projects, all risky, and potentially doomed to failure. Are you saying we shouldn't invest any money in developing new energy sources, or does your anti-Stimulus stance just mean you're a tea bagger, who's going to freak out over any gov't spending--even the spending that helps you?

I think this is a really cool idea. Maybe some of the stimulus money actually went to worthwhile things....

what they should do is find a way to make kinetic engery into electrical

I like Solarpowerhoi comment, actually most of the comments have been very helpful in understanding this 'old' power source, that seems to be having a revival. Hopefully some of these smart people will get their neurons churning and make it usable.

Near the beginning of the video, he gives himself away. He says those Magical, Mystical, ALL-POWERFUL words:

"Too Good To Be True!"

Honesty shall prevail over all its deniers, and smite them with great vengeance and furious anger!*

(* with assistance from Q.T. and O.T.)

Stewie, Stewie, Stewie. Nice little plug there for your president and what a waste of money this was. MIT figured this out like a year and a half ago. Now their just getting paid twice for this failure of an invention. People like you spend all this time complaining about CO2 and it's "damage" to the environment, yet your "breakthrough" technology STILL CREATES A CO2 BYPRODUCT. Geez people, get your heads out of your a--. Why does science have to deal with the burden of politics?

an electric clothes dryer requires a 30 amp 208 volt circuit...most families run a dryer a few hours every week...you rocket scientists can do the math for me...but it seems we could be tooling around in electric cars with that energy...if only there was some way to use the sun to dry our clothes

This article is a bit frustrating. The video is amazingly uninformative
and the article is so brief that I'm not entirely sure what's being
talked about.

So I did a search on ARPA-E and Sun Catalytix and found this.

"The idea behind the technology, developed by Dan Nocera at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, is to use an intermittent source of energy, such as
solar power, to split water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis. When
the energy is needed, the hydrogen and oxygen can either be recombined to
produce electricity, such as with a fuel cell, or the hydrogen can potentially
be converted into a liquid fuel, like ammonia, and used to power vehicles."

So this is about energy storage. In fact it's about hydrolysis. And that
explains the bottle of water business because a bottle of water split into
hydrogen and oxygen represents a heck of a lot of energy.

But of course it takes a heck of a lot of energy to do that.

Basically we are talking, metaphorically, about a battery. They are trying
to come up with a better battery.

More quotes:

Sun Catalytix hopes to change that and is working with cobalt-phosphate catalysts
consisting of compounds in solution, instead of the usual metal surfaces. "The
real benefit is that the materials are dirt cheap," said Metcalfe, who is also
a general partner at Sun Catalytix investor Polaris Ventures and the former CEO
of defunct biofuel startup GreenFuel Technologies.

Aside from the catalysts, the rest of the device also is made of cheap materials,
such as plastic, he added. "All the materials we have [on the device] running
in our office now come from Home Depot -- we’re talking PVC, not stainless steel."

Because the compounds deposit themselves on the electrodes, constantly repairing
themselves as the device splits water, this technology can also use salty or
dirty water, he added, a big advantage where clean water is in short supply.

end-quote

Given the talk about PVC instead of stainless steel and the reference to
dirty water, I'm guessing we are talking about a third world application. In
other words, this will be useful in environments where energy is very expensive,
ie. the third world, and probably not useful in the U.S. where we have an extensive
and elaborate network of power plants that delivers cheap energy.

"Nichogenius"

"Solar panels are only about 10% efficient anyway. Not to mention they take so much energy to produce and barely pay the energy back over their life time."

I'm sorry. This is ENTIRELY wrong.

It's a statistic from the 1980's, when solar cells had to be made from ultra-pure silicon.

And, to be blunt, it's been repeated for decades by people who have a vested interest in dismissing Solar Power.

I had a long talk with a retired Exxon executive, I know all the tricks by now...

The top end of today's solar cells, the stuff NASA used for the Mars Rover, is approaching 40% efficiency. Really pricy stuff though.

Standard Silicon Cells run at 22% off the shelf.

Then there's the thin film cells, that approach 18% efficiency.

And the payback for Silicon cells is generally down to a couple of years, while the lifespan is in decades.

Finally, Google this: caltechs-cheaper-solar-cell-promises-to-double-efficiency/3282/

If the CalTech research pans out, and I see no obstacle to that, solar cell efficiency is about to double.

The caliber of this breathless article is pathetic. Electrolysis is *NOT* 'artificial photosynthesis'.

And there is no inherent link between this technology and solar. I remember when this first came out a while back and it was billed as a 'solar breakthrough',

BS.

An advance in catalysts that lowers the voltage needed to split H2 from O could be very helpful, but the overbilling is absurd.

BTW,
what do you do with the hydrogen to get it back into electricity? Combusting it for a boiler to drive a turbine is inefficient. An expensive fuel cell -- don't make me laugh.

BTW, about storage -- wihtout pressurization (the cheap PVC bit in the article) the volume of hydrogen at room temperature would be quite large (why the Hindenburg floated),in addition to being very leaky.

I have M. Sc. degree in applied physics (1991), and want to comment on the article.

The article, and the attached video, contain lots of blablabla about saving the world etc. but no meaningful information. However, I seached for information about Dan Nocera's research and here are my comments.

1. Photosynthesis is using sun light to transform carbon dyoxide and water into carbohydrates. This is not what Dan Nocera invented or claims to invent, so all mentions of photosynthesis in the video are misleading.

2. Dan Nocera proposes to use solar panel to generate electricity, and then produce hydrogen and oxygen with electrolysis. This idea is old and well-known. Photoelectric effect is known since at least 1902, and electrolysis is known since 1800.

3. The biggest problem is low efficiency and high cost of solar cells. (There is a trade-off between cost and efficiency. The best solar cells are more than 40% efficient, but very, very expensive. Commercially avaliable solar cells on the market are usually between 10% and 20% efficient, while 11% efficiency is, afaik, the most common, due to the high cost of "better" cells.)

4. Dan Nocera DID NOT miracuously eliminate the need in solar batteries, or find how to make solar cells cheaper/more efficient, or improve them in any other way.

5. He only found how cobalt phosphate can be used to speed up the electrolysis. Previously, platinum had been used for this purpose; some researchers suggest titanium dioxide nanostructures. Of course, cobalt phosphate is less expensive than platinum, and maybe it is somehow better than titanium dioxide. So his discovery may be useful. But I wouldn't call it a breakthrough.

6. The promise to "get rid of these damn wires" is just another blablabla. Making electricity back from hydrogen and oxygen is another inefficient process, so if you produce electricity with solar cells, you want to use it immediately or store in electrical batteries. Hydrogen may be useful for vehicles, not for houses.

7. Another problem with hydrogen is that it isn't a very good fuel. For one thing, it is explosive (remember Hindenburg zeppelin disaster?) Also, it is gaseous at normal temperature, and its density is low (0.07 of the density of air), so its storage is not easy. There are some options, but generally its usage even for motor vehicles is problematic.

@urod (and others concerned with 'burning' hydrogen vs. fuel cell technology were it remains enclosed).
I may be wrong here (H1 vs H2) but, isn't hydrogen one of the few gases capable of leaving the earths atmosphere?
So the risk of "burning" hydrogen, without and absolute 100% complete combustion.... if used on the scale we are facing with CO2 emissions, once the hydrogen leaves the planet, its -gone- and a change that may be harder to remedy than CO2 emissions, regarding the planet loosing its water by electrolysis and incomplete combustion.

This struck me as amazing at first - I was thinking the new pipe dream... But then, what is the heat of combustion of H2 141MJ/KG hmmm. If a 1 liter water bottle is our standard then it contains 39KHW of energy if the h-o-h bonds are broken. That isn't news!

Did they figure out a new way to solve the problem? Well the math doesn't change so that means that they need 7.5m2 of solar collection at 100% transmission and a daily incidence of 4KW/m2 or 50m2 of solar arrays at 15% - a common value.

So what did ARPA-E fund? I hope it was more than a clever spin of some simple scientific data into a populistic snake oil.

Come on Pop Sci - don't let this kind of thing get through with a sense of validity, PLEASE!

Leif Johnston
Managing Partner
Technology Catalyst
Incubating New Energy Companies...

@urod: Hi there, I read trough your list of points and agree on most of them. With point 7. I do have a slight issue.

Hydrogen in it's pure form is a difficult and volatile compound to store. However, it can be recombined with carbon-dioxide to produce methane which very much easier to store and to handle. Not unfeasible, provided there was a safe and relatively cheap source of hydrogen. In fact, I'm quite convinced that if (and maybe when) we are entering the "hydrogen economy" it will be methane, not pure hydrogen we will be using as a basic fuel.

In a way, Nocera's basic claim, seems to solve part of the puzzle. But once you do some pretty basic calculations, there is this "perpetum mobile" problem (first law of thermodynamics) with 0.6kWh input for 1kWh output (I refer to my previous calculation in the thread, which are based on some assumptions based on experience. It's needless to say, these assumptions might be way off the mark, but I don't think so. Unfortunately I didn't add enough sanguine irony in my closing words there).

OK, so what is it that Nocera is ACTUALLY trying to say in his marketing schit? That his cobolt-compound increases the H2 extraction yield of electrolysis? In my view, in the center of it all is a pretty basic idea that is being sexed-up by spicing it with all kinds of fashionable side-issues like recycling of waste water, the use of solar power and so on.

The only question that remains, is that is the basic idea worth anything as it is or must it be dressed up to make a sale?

One thing that is always true about liberals. They lie. This study was a total waste of your and my money. PopSci should be ashamed that they published this article. The Author, Stuart Fox, must be a member of the American Socialist Party.

Comment 71

Comment 72

I use a similar method to heat my home.

I let trees grow on my land, which use sunlight to capture hydrogen (and carbon!).

I then take those trees with a modest expenditure of energy, mostly taken from the infinate energy loop that surrounds my "healthy" waistline, and convert them into "batteries."

I put those "batteries" into my fireplace and heat my home with them.

The system is carbon neutral, since the carbon released is captured by the trees growing for future year's use.

Being green while cutting down trees - the advantage to living on a sustainable piece of land - rather than those city-living polluters.

I have a degree in Bla Bla Bla. Here are the facts as I know them:

Hydrogen is not "explosive". The Hindenburg is fire is not proof of anything except that painting anything with aluminum and iron oxide powder is dangerous.

Hydrogen is containable and will not leak out of a container submerged in water. It is not water soluble.

A byproduct of Hydrogen burned using air will create nitrates. It is best to avoid breathing nitrates so don't try to cook using pure Hydrogen with atmospheric oxygen.

After he separation of Hydrogen and Oxygen via electrolysis the two gases can be stored in the same container safely. There will never be a explosion. There can only be an implosion. What was a quart of water may never become larger than that quart when recombined.
The public ignorance and fear of explosions has hobbled a conversion to a hydrogen society since fear always overrides rational thought.

As for conversion efficiency: What difference does it make to measure efficiency if the source is free? I'm not selling anything nor buying anything so the only people who would care about efficiency would be the government or some chest beating engineers.

Click Click

@grievousg:
There IS a way for the sun the dry our clothes. YOU HANG THEM OUTSIDE!!!

How much space do you need to capture the sunlight? I mean, you couldn't attach one of these to a car, or set it in the window of an apartment, could you?

Maybe you could use the device at home to make hydrogen, and use a hydrogen fuel cell overnight to charge your car. But again, only if you have lots of yard space to take up that much sunlight.

The dream of hi tech solutions to our energy problems has always been there. For an idea (less fancy than splitting water) that has worked, check out the 100% locally renewable energy solution at Malmlo's Western Harbour:

www.citiesforpeople.net/cities/westernharbour.html

I wonder how cheap it really is, and if it is cheap only relative to more expensive methods.

Beecher Bowers
www.beecherbowers.com

There is something missing here, what's the con's about this method? Not everything is go to be wonderful and this technology needs more studies to make it relevant and accessible for use. www.oi-torpedo.com

To Sir Stephen:

> There will never be a explosion. There can only be an implosion. What was a quart of water may never become larger than that quart when recombined.

No, what was a quart of water becomes many many quarts of hot vapour. Even at atmospheric pressure and temperature, 1 quart of liquid water = 1200 quarts of vapour, and volume of gases is proportional to temperature at fixed pressure, or their pressure is proportional to temperature at fixed volume.

> Hydrogen is not "explosive". The Hindenburg is fire is not proof of anything except that painting anything with aluminum and iron oxide powder is dangerous.

No, it is. It was hydrogen which exploded at Hindenburg. Even now, hydrogen is not used (with maybe very rare exceptions) for manned balloons, instead they use much more expensive helium. There is no way to make it completely safe. I don't know where did you get that it was a painting which exploded.

> It is not soluble in water.

I don't know where did you get this, either. On a molar basis, it is almost as soluble in water as oxygen. Not that it matters.

As for conversion efficiency: What difference does it make to measure efficiency if the source is free?

The source may be free, but sun batteries are not. Thats why the efficiency matters.

JohnStClair, but don't forget the effect of the magnetized quantum matrix, which spins in a right-handed tensor nanotube.منتديات That multiples the gas exponentially. Better than beans.

Photosynthesis is very efficient. I saw a lot of ideas over the years that didn't pan out but this one is cooler than cool-aid, if the promise survives the hype........

Paley
http://burnwiigames.org

This sounds pretty great on the surface. After all, who WOULDN'T want to be able to power their entire house on a bottle of water? :)

But, interesting as it is, neither the article, nor the video, answers two important, and seemingly obvious (to me anyway) questions:

1. How much does it cost to produce the mysterious "catalyst"? Unless it works out at a lower per-unit cost than the cheapest form of electricity currently available, then it doesn't seem like something that will take off, without a pretty big jump in oil prices.

2. To what extent does the water have to be treated first? Can you simply scoop a few gallons from the nearest river, detritus and all? If the water has to be extensively filtered and cleaned, it's going to add greatly to the overall end cost of the energy produced.

Naoise O Rourke,
www.thebadbreathreport.com

Water is the leftover "ash" from a previous liberation of energy resulting from a combination of hydrogen and oxygen. Energy must be added to split it into two gases again before the reaction can be repeated. Unless the Laws of Thermodynamics are repealed more energy will be required to split the gases than can be harvested from the re-combination.
www.tran33m.com/vb/

It seems like most of the comments here have this development wrong. First he only said that it is "like" photosynthesis in that it creates fuel from water(plants also use carbon dioxide). The fuel here is of course hydrogen. Oxygen is a bi-product, but not really a fuel. The process here doesn't use regular photovoltaics to create electricity, then use that electricity to electrolyze water to produce hydrogen. That would be a horribly inefficient process. This process uses a photoactivated catalyst(I'm not sure that catalyst is the right term here, as a catalyst normally just speeds up reactions that would happen anyway - this actually uses the sun's energy to cause the redox reverse chemical reaction to cause the reverse of a normal reaction-hydrogen and oxygen burning to create water).

The innovation here is that he has developed a much better "catalyst", far cheaper and more stable with actually feasible effective lifetimes, than what they had been looking at before. Why this is cool, if it pans out, is that his panels would be even higher in efficiency that good photovoltaic cells, and that they produce something that can easily and cheaply(with conventional technology) produce electricity immediately via hydrogen fuel cells at a very high efficiency(once you have the hydrogen). This hydrogen can also be stored for the hours that don't have sunlight, although I'm not convinced that this is completely debugged. Hydrogen is not very compressible and needs to be "adsorbed" onto some medium, that can release it easily. This is something that is being worked on for hydrogen cars, where the weight and bulk of this adsorption medium is an issue. For homes, it should be much easier than cars. If they ever get the car fuel cells hydrogen storage solved, then one's home solar hydrogen generation system could also charge up your car's hydrogen storage tanks while your car is home.
All that said, there are some misleading ideas in the video. Like the liter of water having the energy to run a household. The amount of water cycling through this system is trivial. The water is by far the cheapest part of the cycle. What they don't detail, is it still requires collecting panels of substantial area, and how the hydrogen is gathered from the panels, and if the oxygen is mixed with it and would have to be separated(there are semipermeable membranes that can do this pretty easily). The whole system sounds like a great idea, but this is just one part, a very important part, that looks like its going to be licked, but there are lots of other issues before its commercial.