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New Solar Cell Harvests Hydrogen From Water

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the stealing-what-plants-crave dept.

Engadgets is reporting that researchers at Penn State have built a new kind of solar cell that can harvest hydrogen directly from water. "The folks at Penn State have now developed a process that more closely mimics the photosynthesis process in plants, and while we won't pretend to understand all the nitty gritty of dye usage and other such nonsense, we do know that such a system could eventually attain 15% or so efficiency, providing a nice and clean way to gather power for that fuel cell car of the future."

4 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. TFA is worthless. by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 5, Informative

    The summary = the article.

    The original article was on Science Daily a few days back.

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    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    1. Re:TFA is worthless. by SocraTease · · Score: 5, Informative

      Additionally, here's a more informative article posted by Penn State. http://live.psu.edu/story/28853

    2. Re:TFA is worthless. by gnick · · Score: 5, Informative

      That gives me 23% not 6.6%. Anybody have any more insight into this? From the source cited in Wikipedia:

      1. At least eight photons are required to store one molecule of CO2 which means 1665 kJ of light energy are required to store 477 kJ in the plant. Max efficiency is 0.286 or 28.6 %

      2. Only light in the range 400-700 nm can be used. This amounts to 43% of total solar incident radiation.

      3. Canopy limits absorption to 80 %

      4. Respiration required for translocation and biosynthesis requires about 33% of the energy stored which leaves 67%

      The overall efficiency is then .286x.43x.8x.67 = .066 or 6.6% So, the Wikipedia editor left out an important part of the equation. Ops! As a side note, asking "Can anybody shed some more light on this?" instead of "Anybody have any more insight into this?" would have earned you a cheesy pun point.
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  2. Re:Yawnnn by pizzutz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Step 4 is "put it outside in sunlight" I think the point is that they have bypassed using electrolysis, instead using the sunlight to stimlate a dye and catylist that splits the water directly. If so, it would be much more efficient than using a solar cell and electrolysis.

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