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

mod up

[ushering05401]

Parent is first one to point out storage benefit... someone with points should mod up.

This is the biggest problem with solar/wind power, the power generated often needs to be supplemented with conventional generation technologies to ensure constant energy supply. Production of stored energy source like hydrogen solves this issue.

Re:15% efficiency

[sir fer]

the idea that human emissions of CO2 is responsible for any kind of effect in the global atmosphere is sheer arrogance at worst and delusional at best....i hate reading peoples concern about "global warming" and "greenhouse gases" here on /. or anywhere else that is supposed to be being read by informed people.

the most important "greenhouse gas" is water vapour so maybe we should cover up the oceans so that all that nasty greenhouse producing water vapour will not reach the atmosphere?

Stupid, stupid , stupid.

Get the facts before you get on the bullshit bandwagon.