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Researchers Generate Electricity Using Seawater and Sunlight
Slashdot reader sosume writes: Scientists at Osaka University have created a new method to use sunlight to turn seawater into hydrogen peroxide which can then be used in fuel cells to generate electricity. It's the first photocatalytic method of H2O2 production that achieves a high enough efficiency so that the H2O2 can be used in a fuel cell.
It's easier and safer to transport liquid H2O2, according to the article, and while its total efficiency is much lower than conventional solar cells, the researchers hope to get better results by using better materials.
It's easier and safer to transport liquid H2O2, according to the article, and while its total efficiency is much lower than conventional solar cells, the researchers hope to get better results by using better materials.
The point of this technology is not the production of the energy, but it's ability to use to store that energy for future use, like when it's night.
Compared to what? Hydrogen? Why the pivot over to comparing against conventional solar cells? What?
The energy needs to be harvested right away via a fuel cell because the h2o2 is way too diluted to store when produced
I believe NOTHING! cold fusing crazies
I think I saw one of those rapist women from the "Falko" videos living ni Gravataí/RS/Brazil. The still rape kids every weekend. I think her name is Jaqueline or Helena or Fernanda. Whatever, it's a fake name... But her daddy still drives the white Camaro.
Widespread and common storage of hydrogen peroxide won't be welcomed in some quarters, as it's is a very well known agent of homebrew bombs.
URL:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6274299.stm/
They got 33 years.
mdsolar is a shill who ignores the huge problems of cost and load balancing related to PV generation.
Slashdot has become the place where low profile researchers advertise their fresh and impractical results. I wonder if /. Gets money for it. I hope they do, otherwise, it doesn't worth it.
Energy efficiency and economic efficiency are totally different. Economic efficiency is "how much effort and resources do I have to expend to get this thing to work?" You can have 100% energy efficiency, but if its economic efficiency is $100 per kWh, nobody is going to use it. It is literally cheaper to build a larger system with lower energy efficiency to harvest the same amount of energy. This seawater method could have 0.1% energy efficiency, but if it economic efficiency is $0.05 per kWh it would be a tremendous breakthrough.
mdsolar doesn't care about economic efficiency, which is why his "solutions" are pointless for the real world. The reason PV solar languishes at below 1% of electrical production is not some grand conspiracy. It's because PV's wholesale production cost (after factoring in construction, financing, maintenance, lifespan) is up around $200-$300 per MWh. Coal is around $40 per MWh, around $350 per MWh if you include the environmental and health damage it causes that the IMF estimated in it's "$5.3 trillion subsidy" report. Gas around $60. Nuclear is around $60 ($90-$100 for new construction). Hydro around $30. Wind around $70-$100.
PV has dropped to about $125-$150 per MWh in the last few years, but it remains to be seen if that's real gains or due to dumping by Chinese manufacturers to try to drive other manufacturers out of business. Even if real, it still remains the most expensive source of electricity, which is why it's stuck at below 1% of production.
Hydrogen Peroxide is not electricity
Low molar solutions of Hydrogen Peroxide in sea water aren't particularly useful for anything.
If they used salt water from Fukushima, it should store energy for 10,000 plus years, ie. half life.
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
It doesn't? Where not?
Research like this offers great hope for all of us. I wonder what concentration of hydrogen peroxide is required for use in a fuel cell. Obviously in its pure form it is great as rocket fuel.
H2O2 is not a particularly good way to store energy. It is a strong oxidizer, and can burn human flesh unless diluted down to about 3%. It will ignite many substances on contact. It is also thermodynamically unstable, and can explosively decompose if it gets too hot, or comes in contact with something flammable. When it decomposes, it produces concentrated oxygen, which can cause fires to burn out of control. It is nasty stuff.
Unfortunately, facts, which you presented quite clearly, don't matter to many. Solar advocates will avoid talking about the real cost of energy in MWh at all costs (pun intended).
Another economic impact that gets brushed aside in national content supply and jobs. For PV, a large chunk of the initial capital cost goes straight to China or other Asian manufactures. There are some US manufacturers but they are not the biggest players. Installation jobs are low paying, and there are few ongoing maintenance jobs. Wind requires a bit more from a maintenance and on-going supply standpoint, and has pretty good local parts content.
Coal, gas, and nuclear all have high local construction content, and employ more people with higher paying jobs on an ongoing basis. In a changing world where automation is taking over and good jobs are harder to find, employment factors into the overall economic benefit. A nuclear plant, for instance, will employ hundreds of six figure salary, educated workers, and also hundreds of higher paying craft and labor jobs. Nuclear and coal also keep a large number of support companies in business. And, they pay back a lot more in taxes via property, employment, etc than they are subsidized.
I know how to generate electricity using sunlight and no seawater at all!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
They provided efficiency numbers in the article of 0.28%. That's not very effective on a small scale.
But does the fuel cell produce clean water as a byproduct?
A portable power supply that generates salt-free water as a 'waste' product would be very useful in a desert even if the efficiency remains as bad as mentioned. Many deserts are near large bodies of salt or polluted water. They frequently also have lot of Sunlight to go around. (Antarctica is a desert but finding salt-free water on a content-size glacier was not an issue the last I checked.)
At the worse it could be used in a closed cycle system to store some power for the night time. But that depends on the complexity and materials needed to pull of the H2O to H2O2 process.
And peroxide series explosives have a nasty habit of "cooking off" on their own so militarizing it is only for the sheer stupid.
You can always store extraneous PV output using electrolysis. The technology is sufficiently advanced as of now, and additionally, you don't have to operate two different kinds of light-harvesting devices and suffer the inefficiency of having too much or too little of either of the two at certain times. You simply use directly whatever immediate output you need from the PV plants to power the grid and use the rest for storage. You can also transfer the power from places where the electricity is generated to places where it is stored, ever over considerable distance, all using the same grid, so you don't have to lay both cables *and* pipes throughout your country.
Ezekiel 23:20
It's because PV's wholesale production cost [wikipedia.org] (after factoring in construction, financing, maintenance, lifespan) is up around $200-$300 per MWh.
Uh...$300/MWh...? Where the hell do you live? In some kind of Goldplatedistan? Maybe you could make a less piss-poor argument using actual recent figures instead of referring to some decade-old tables that even Wikipedia itself warns about being out of date.
it still remains the most expensive source of electricity
Uh, nope. That would probably be diesel generators. And gas, in Europe. And especially diesel generators in Europe.
Ezekiel 23:20
Another economic impact that gets brushed aside in national content supply and jobs. For PV, a large chunk of the initial capital cost goes straight to China or other Asian manufactures. There are some US manufacturers but they are not the biggest players.
I assume you never buy Asian electronics? Also, as far as economy is concerned, people generally profit from lower prices of goods. If US manufacturers are not the biggest players, maybe they could try harder? It's their problem if they're uncompetitive, not the buyer's problem.
Nuclear and coal also keep a large number of support companies in business
You make it sound if needing lots of people was good for industrial progress. On the contrary, getting rid of people is the best thing you can do.
Ezekiel 23:20
Another economic impact that gets brushed aside in national content supply and jobs. ... There are some US manufacturers but they are not the biggest players. Installation jobs are low paying, and there are few ongoing maintenance jobs. Wind requires a bit more from a maintenance and on-going supply standpoint, and has pretty good local parts content.
Coal, gas, and nuclear all have high local construction content, and employ more people with higher paying jobs on an ongoing basis. In a changing world where automation is taking over and good jobs are harder to find, employment factors into the overall economic benefit.
You mean that Make-work is a good thing?
It has a negative economic impact.
This is true: economic efficiency (including all externalities) is the number that matters most. But at 0.55% energy efficiency in the conversion from solar to H2O2, dropped to 0.28% after H2O2 to electricity, it will need to be ridiculously cheap per for its economic efficiency to make up the huge gap in energy efficiency compared to traditional PV solar with battery storage.
Large parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia will probably never have practical solar power. Even in the summer the efficiency is relatively bad (due to the angle of the sunlight) and when energy is needed the most in the winter the northern parts have almost no sunlight at all.
Pure hydrogen peroxide is some pretty nasty stuff, it will cause serious burns and burns/explodes under some circumstances (boiled, contact with silver, etc). It can be made safer by diluting it in water but that would also effect its fuel storage potential. I assume that it would be a pretty environmentally friendly fuel since it naturally decomposes into water and oxygen but on its way there it would be far more hazardous to humans in the case of spills. I'd happily deal with the stuff over gas (especially if I could make my own with some creek water and I assume a few chemicals to make it more "ocean like") but I don't know if most would be so willing.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Pump water vertically up when there is excess energy. When there isn't, let it run downhill through a turbine.
Smallish elevated steel water tanks (which are recyclable when EOL is reached) will do for small installations. Since they're up high, they can be very close to zero-footprint. For large ones, lakes work, though there's a definite real estate issue there, and artificial lakes are better because there's better leakage control. People tend to like lakes, too. As long as it doesn't require them to give up their property...
Pumped storage worldwide: Supply capacity: 127 GW; Reserve capacity: 740 TWh; efficiency 70...80%, some claims made for more.
Awesome stuff.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So, you view generating electricity as 'make work'. I think users of electricity would disagree that it has no value.
I don't intend to go full Goodwin, but Hitler said the same thing.
I assume you never buy Asian electronics? Also, as far as economy is concerned, people generally profit from lower prices of goods. If US manufacturers are not the biggest players, maybe they could try harder? It's their problem if they're uncompetitive, not the buyer's problem.
Why would you assume I never by Asian products. I do. That is completely irrelevant to my point, in fact I pointed out that the US IS very competitive in supply of content for nuclear, gas, and coal. I didn't say it was a 'buyers problem' either. Not sure how that is relevant. My points stand even with your tangential commentary.
You make it sound if needing lots of people was good for industrial progress. On the contrary, getting rid of people is the best thing you can do.
No, I said creating more jobs is a positive economic factor. In case you haven't figured it out, unemployment is not a good thing for the economic health of a nation, nor the individuals.
Large parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia will probably never have practical solar power.
That's perfectly fine, though. Nordic interconnects with Danish wind and German wind and solar together with Norwegian hydro can power a substantial part of the region. Swedish and Finnish nukes can handle the rest. Poland, though, looks bound to remain dirty for a considerable time to come.
Ezekiel 23:20
That's a poor argument. Modern civilization is filled with chemicals that will kill you faster than h202 and we don't prohibit those.
Researchers are developing a new type of environmentally friendly fuel cell that runs on aluminum and renewable resources and generates about 20 times more electricity per pound than car batteries.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...
Why would you assume I never by Asian products. I do. That is completely irrelevant to my point, in fact I pointed out that the US IS very competitive in supply of content for nuclear, gas, and coal. I didn't say it was a 'buyers problem' either. Not sure how that is relevant. My points stand even with your tangential commentary.
The US could play a much larger role if it wanted. Between automation and smart manufacturing and such innovative products as SolarCity's upcoming high-efficiency, low-cost cells, there's absolutely potential for US-based PV companies to snatch a substantial portion of the global market.
No, I said creating more jobs is a positive economic factor. In case you haven't figured it out, unemployment is not a good thing for the economic health of a nation, nor the individuals.
Unemployment doesn't seem to be a problem for robotic utopias. Getting the same wealth output from fewer people has never been not a good thing.
Ezekiel 23:20
Even if available land area is plentiful in places, going from, say, 15% of average solar panels to 0.5% of this solution seems excessive. The land is still not exactly free, unless one plans to distribute the chemicals into all other US states out of Arizona and New Mexico and such.
Ezekiel 23:20
Uh, lost opportunity cost would like to have a talk with you...
Ezekiel 23:20
You have just a plethora of irrelevant points and comments, don't you?.... please continue. I am amused.
We're talking about hydrogen peroxide, right? Like people use to put on cuts to keep them from getting infected?
How is it irrelevant to point out that instead of generating X units of electricity with Y people, those Y people either generating 2X units of electricity or generating X units of electricity and also Z units of some other useful product the society needs being the better option should be obvious to anyone with even rudimentary numeracy skills and knowledge of economy?
Ezekiel 23:20
Its irrelevant when there are already more Y people than there are X jobs. Don't you C?
We're talking about hydrogen peroxide, right? Like people use to put on cuts to keep them from getting infected?
And rocket propellent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You mean that Make-work is a good thing?
It has a negative economic impact.
All work is make work. There is no fundamental reason that humans could not go back to hunter gathering. All else is optional.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
We're talking about hydrogen peroxide, right? Like people use to put on cuts to keep them from getting infected?
The hydrogen peroxide antiseptic in your medicine cabinet is 97% water and 3% H2O2.
This uses sea water.
Fish and other stuff lives in sea water
You will use all the sear water!
Think of the fish!
It's a dumb idea- don't try this at home- but in principle there's no reason why you couldn't make an engine that runs on TNT.
TNT explosions are sooty. When TNT detonates it forms nitrogen gas and steam, but also carbon monoxide and elemental carbon which are both flammable- so you actually get more energy out of TNT if you burn it with oxygen instead of detonating it. TNT is pretty stable and was originally used as a yellow dye for years before anyone even realized it could explode (or that it was toxic). It can be melted and aerosolized like gasoline or diesel into a flammable fuel-air mixture. But since it melts at 80 degrees, it would be like making a ICE engine that runs on melted wax. It would also generate YUGE amounts of nitrogen oxides and would be much filthier than diesel. In general nitrogen is not something you want in an internal combustion engine, and there are plenty of organic molecules that don't contain nitrogen at all. From an emissions perspective, THC would be a much better fuel than TNT.
TNT also has catalytic properties (it can form charge-transfer complexes) so it might actually be useful in something like a battery.
All work is make work. There is no fundamental reason that humans could not go back to hunter gathering.
Immediate massive starvation is not a good enough reason?
Ezekiel 23:20
FOOF is even more fun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pi...
Let's add Icelink to Iceland for Geothermal and hydro to that too shall we..?
For the US$45 billion estimate for the next UK nuke station complex you
could do so many other things that might otherwise seem silly. But then
nuclear is just so damn stupid on so many levels....
By the way, I live in Japan. Third largest Geothermal capability, with less
than 1GW of 20GW known that is actually utilized. Much better to trash
the economy of a chunk of a province like Fukushima and dump the cost
on the government because the nuke isnt privately insured. You just cant
make this stuff up.
Economics is far more a religion than the PV religion you espouse against, and much more dangerous.
As you can see from your coal estimate, economics has ZERO idea what potential worldwide pollution and climate change will "cost" in "dollars". Those costs are all externalized to people other than the profiteers, so economics is even more useless and dangerous than people pushing PV.
All hail the almighty dollar. Which is based on what again?
If you love economics as much as you appear to, you'd realize it's adherents don't care about people having jobs as long as costs are cheaper. Those costs being, of course, only those they can measure and those that they are unable to saddle other unsuspecting people with, or even costs like "might destroy the habitability of the planet".
* Godwin
FTFY
This is going to happen regardless with automation and AI as we've already seen. Perhaps it's finally time to consider alternatives such as Universal Basic Income.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Economics captures and accounts for those costs as externalities. It's the politicians that allow businesses to force others to bear them.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
And FOOOF is even more fun. Personally, I want some octanitrocubane to play with. It's just a beautifully symmetrical molecule.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The hydrogen peroxide antiseptic in your medicine cabinet is 97% water and 3% H2O2.
The hydrogen peroxide in this story is about 5%. The scary stuff you're talking about is more like 30% and up.
H2O2 is also an excellent ingredient in homebrew explosives and incendiaries, to the point that concentrated forms of it are highly regulated, even to the ludicrous level that in some countries they have discussed banning hair bleach containing peroxide. Even in the US, solutions more concentrated than (I think) about 5-6% H2O2 are not legal without special permits. Good luck transporting barrels of the pure stuff.
Icelink already got built? The last time I checked, it was a project under consideration - although a tantalizing one for sure.
Ezekiel 23:20
An energy company has an all-blonde workforce.
So, you view generating electricity as 'make work'. I think users of electricity would disagree that it has no value.
You fail reading comprehension completely – Mr. Troll.