Energy From Water

Two papers published in today's issue of Science announce breakthroughs in making cheap solar energy a reality.

A big problem with getting energy from the sun has been that the sun doesn't shine all the time, at least down where we are.

Plants get around this by harnessing the sun's energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and using the energy in these molecules to make storable sugars. The plants can break these down later, come rain or shine, releasing the stored energy.

Researchers have tried to make this process work without plants, by using catalysts to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and then using a fuel cell to recombine the stored hydrogen and oxygen later to make water and energy. But making this work has required harsh conditions and expensive materials. The new papers get around these problems by finding new catalysts, opening the door to 'round the clock solar energy.

The first paper uses a cheap cobalt-phosphate catalyst to create oxygen from water, and the second gets around the expensive platinum catalyst needed for the hydrogen side of the process, replacing it with one made from organic materials.

There's plenty of development to do to take the process from lab to the real world, but the researchers are clearly fired up about it, and others in the field are, too. Read some more about it:here, here, and here.

(Image: New oxygen catalyst in action, credit: MIT/NSF)

Comments

[tooba]

i wonna no how can v get energy from water only nothin 2 di from sun n anything else