Duplicating MIT's artificial photosynthesis breakthrough

Get some salt water and put an electrical current generated by your solar cells. Capture the O2 and H then use at night by burning the hydrogen in oxygen to run your steam engine.

The article in the URL given is no good. The author is one of those journalists who think *everything* is _amazing_. I found a slightly better description of Dr. Nocera's catalyst here:

S.

Not only that but it could be "duplicated" by the original discoverers of electrolysis of water over 250 years ago - shortly after the first primitive batteries were invented by Volta.

Reported to the UK Royal Society around 1800 by William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle. Humphrey Davy went on to isolate all sorts of metals from molten salts by electrolysis in later experiments.

Electrolysis of water (with a condutive salt added - usually sodium sulphate) to make hydrogen and oxygen is a classical high school experiment.

The MIT hyped up press release and subsequent reporting of it in the media is pathetic. They should report what they have done and how much of an improvement it is over state of the art (if any).

A true stable man made photosynthetic catalyst would be very impressive but this is just an improvement in electrolytic cell efficiency.

A couple of carbon rods, some wire and a battery is all you need.

There may be a breakthrough here in that one electrode can now be made much cheaper and with higher efficiency. But it is impossible from the press release to be anything other than totally underwhelmed.

Regards, Martin Brown

Not only that but it could be "duplicated" by the original discoverers of electrolysis of water over 250 years ago - shortly after the first primitive batteries were invented by Volta.

Reported to the UK Royal Society around 1800 by William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle. Humphrey Davy went on to isolate all sorts of metals from molten salts by electrolysis in later experiments.

Electrolysis of water (with a condutive salt added - usually sodium sulphate) to make hydrogen and oxygen is a classical high school experiment.

The MIT hyped up press release and subsequent reporting of it in the media is pathetic. They should report what they have done and how much of an improvement it is over state of the art (if any).

A true stable man made photosynthetic catalyst would be *very* impressive (Nobel Prize winning) but this is just an improvement in electrolytic cell efficiency.

A couple of carbon rods, some wire and a battery is all you need.

There may be a breakthrough here in that one electrode can now be made much cheaper and with higher efficiency. But it is impossible from the press release to be anything other than totally underwhelmed.

Regards, Martin Brown

PS Apologies if this appears twice - news servers playing up

It's an electrolysis technology - modelled after photosynthesis. *Lousy* article.

-- Les Cargill

Possibly, but it's not as simple as the article makes it appear. Here's an article with some background info:

-- Joe

Looks like a better hydrolysis by changing the metal electrodes to me. But it really doesn't give enough info to see how it is supposed to work, and platinum is very expensive stuff. A hydrogen boost rig for my car would be very expensive indeed.

these articles all seem to focus on generating hydrogen separately from water, and generating oxygen separately; rather than generating them simultaneously. if that's what he's doing, it really is earthshaking....

Fair enough - good correction.

I don't know enough p-chem* to say why platinum is always the preferred catalyst - but there have to be about a hundred million catalytic converters rotting in landfills somewhere.... platinum, palladium, that series of metals...

But who knows? Maybe it's a first step in a chain. Seems like we get very little but abstreuse scienc eporjects from MIT these days...

-- Les Cargill

I think that's just an artifact of how poorly written the article is. If you remove oxygen from H20, what's left is hydrogen.... granted, removal of one hydrogen atom produces peroxide...

-- Les Cargill

catalyst

It isnt.

landfills somewhere.... platinum,

Bugger all of those in those tho.

Nope.

Thats the altzhiemers.

Or complete wanks like this one.

Possibly, but it's not as simple as the article makes it appear. Here's an article with some background info:

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And here's a research article about hydrogen generation by means of genetically engineered cyanobacteria (and green algae), photosynthetic bacteria, and and anaerobic bacteria:

Sounds promising. Only about 6% efficient, but bacteria and algae are probably very inexpensive to produce, and maybe you only need to make large shallow lakes with plastic covers to capture the hydrogen? It has to be better than generating electricity from photocells and then doing hydrolysis on water. Once you have electricity, storage is easy.

Paul

This seems a lot simpler, ( I wonder what they aren't telling the investors)

martin

When I first heard about this, I thought they had come up with a cheap method to directly split water with sun light. Unfortunately that is NOT the case. This thing is nothing but another electrolyzer using some EXPENSIVE cobalt based catalyst. No mention was made of what it brings to the table not found in traditional electrolyzers. Presumably the efficiency is higher? But who knows? The electricity still has to come from something like silicon cells which, in effect, makes it a non starter.

It's the cells that have to get cheaper and more readily available. What's the deal with the electrolyzer? Is that a problem area needing a "break through?"

Yet again an energy announcement hyped in the press turns out to be virtually nothing to write home about. I guess we can go back to sleep for awhile longer!

BTW cobalt is one of those strategic materials that comes from an unstable part of the world, Africa. We need it like a hole in the head as an important substance required for our energy independence. Furthermore, apparently the hydrogen electrode needs to involve platinum. That's another detriment to successful implementation. I say, back to the lab!

It sounds like MIT has reinvented electrolysis. Good for them.

I wouldn't worry about that. There's a strong incentive to recycle precious metals at $100/unit or so. A friend had one stolen off his pickup the other day. Word now is to weld the converter on rather than depend on a removable clamp.

Possibly, but it's not as simple as the article makes it appear. Here's an article with some background info:

-- Joe

I read this article and now am totally confused. Does the Nocera invention allow sunlight to work directly on water, a reverse solar fuel cell if you will, or does it require external electric current? The PDF above implies the former but is not clear. All other articles talk of solar cells or other electricity sources. I never saw such a pile of poorly written articles obfuscating an invention.

It's not clear to me what we have, how it proposed to be implemented or what additional devices or equipment will be required for operation.

The article is in today's issue of Science, available only for a fee.

The transcript here's the best description I've found...

...but still no mention of efficiency or other performance data. Which reeks. If it ain't efficient, it ain't a breakthrough. If it is, that's what they should be touting.

Cheers, James Arthur

This is quite a strange article. Photolysis it is well known for decades

Looks like what they did was to improve the efficiency of it, aka reduced the amount of space you need to cover with panels to produce a certain amount of hydrogen. The question is how much they improved. If it is more efficient (either as used space or as invested money) than using a classic photovoltaic panel to electrolyze the water, then it is a nice and useful progress progress.

But the article seems a bit too extravagant, since the biggest problem for solar energy is hydrogen storage not production. The problem with the hydrogen from solar energy is not to get it out (anyone can do it in his own backyard with a glass jar and 2 pencil leads connected to a commercial solar panel), but how to store it safe to be used during the cold and dark winter nights. For short term (overnight) storage of power, today's batteries are close to be good enough. The problem is that when you need most energy (winter with long nights) the sun is the dimmest in the year and is more cloudy too. And energy storage in batteries for 6 months it is ridiculous. Will never work.

Hydrogen is the answer but it is dangerous. Having any family home with a huge hydrogen tank in his backyard within city limits it is a total civilization annihilation event waiting to happen. So, the bigger problem to be solved is energy storage.

"Algae, even in a regular, horizontal, open pond system, can produce up to 20,000 gallons of oil per year"

------------------------------------------------------------------------- The problem is that the this would make you think that there is 20,000 gallons of diesel fuel equivalent. There isn't. I am a strong proponent of algae biofuels, but I wish these people would stop all the hype and tell it like it is, From a pond system you can get 1500 gallons and from a bag system you can probably get 3000 gallons of real diesel. At this point everyone runs away screaming it will take too much land. But it won't. The land and the water are free and plastic bags just don't cost a lot of dough. So how much for the solar collectors and the pumps and tanks? Algae farming is much more cost effective than any standard agricultural fuel production and that is what we should be looking at. We should be asking how much can we afford to pay the people that run the farm while amortizing the cost of the pumps and the bags and the hangers and solar collectors and motors. And you can only do a 3 year amortization on the bags and a ten year amortization on the rest.

There will be no greenhouse because that costs too much. The farms should be located surrounding the Sea of Cortes for the amount of sunlight, the saltwater, and the free land, no freezes, and no bad storms. AT last, NAFTA may pay off.

I am not Mr. Business. I have no idea whether 3000 gallons per year of real stuff is profitable of not. But if what I have specified doesn't work then it is not workable. And BTW -- Corn and all the rest of the ag stuff sucks. IT seems to me that 10 years is the life of this deal because in 10 years we will have better options. Those cement ponds cost to much for a 10 year life. Bag it.