New Solar Cell Harvests Hydrogen From Water

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."

Comments

Re:15% efficiency

[PrescriptionWarning]

i think thats 40% towards creating electricity, this is 15% towards creating pure Hydrogen

You don't need high efficiency though...

[brunes69]

Efficiency is not so important in this application because of the useage of your typical car. A car typically sits around for 75% of the day doing nothing. This whole time this process could be converting water into hydrogen.

The only time it would not work is during long highway trips. During these times some kind of accelerated process or hydrogen filling station would be needed.

Re:15% efficiency

[TheRaven64]

I disagree. Lots of the best places for solar collection are a long way away from human habitation. If you can efficiently produce hydrogen (or, better, an energy-dense hydrocarbon) in these places then you can easily transport it to where it is needed.

Re:Wrong.

[misleb]

I'm not going to waste my time digging up the numbers to refute this.

Go ahead and try. Electricity is far more valuable than chemical fuels. You can do so much more with it with much more efficiency. Electric cars, for example, run at, what, 90% efficiency? Electric heat pumps can actually get more heat in your home than they use to do it. You can produce light very efficiently as well. Ever try to light your home with natural gas? Electricity is the universal form of energy with the highest value, joule for joule.

I'm repeating myself in this thread, I know, but this point is very important:

The ONLY reason that chemical fuels seem valuable now is because we essentially get them for free. Or rather, all the work has already been done to store the energy. We just need to dig it up, refine it a bit, and get it where it is needed. If there ever came a time when there was no natural hydrocabons available, we'd very quickly realize just what a waste chemical fuels are.