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UCLA Researchers Use Solar To Create and Store Hydrogen (phys.org)
UCLA researchers have designed a device that can use solar energy to inexpensively and efficiently create and store energy, which could be used to power electronic devices, and to create hydrogen fuel for eco-friendly cars. Phys.Org reports: The device could make hydrogen cars affordable for many more consumers because it produces hydrogen using nickel, iron and cobalt -- elements that are much more abundant and less expensive than the platinum and other precious metals that are currently used to produce hydrogen fuel. Traditional hydrogen fuel cells and supercapacitors have two electrodes: one positive and one negative. The device developed at UCLA has a third electrode that acts as both a supercapacitor, which stores energy, and as a device for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, a process called water electrolysis. All three electrodes connect to a single solar cell that serves as the device's power source, and the electrical energy harvested by the solar cell can be stored in one of two ways: electrochemically in the supercapacitor or chemically as hydrogen. The device also is a step forward because it produces hydrogen fuel in an environmentally friendly way. Currently, about 95 percent of hydrogen production worldwide comes from converting fossil fuels such as natural gas into hydrogen -- a process that releases large quantities of carbon dioxide into the air, said Maher El-Kady, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher and a co-author of the research. The technology is described in the journal Energy Storage Materials.
So it's a standard electrolysis but with a solar panel, and a switch to charge a super capacitor instead of performing electrolysis?
So not only is energy being created but hydrogen itself. What an amazing invention. And all from solar power (which apparently isn't energy?). Perhaps it's a photo to hydrogen converter that produces an excess of energy. Quantum vacuum blah blah.
It doesnt store the hydrogen!!!
Sounds like ordinary hoax.
If I understood this right, the device will either charge an electric battery, create hydrogen through nuclear fission, or extract hydrogen from water using electrolysis.
They've taken two things that share a common electrode and put that electrode in the middle, added a switch so they can switch the solar plate to operate EITHER the super-capacitor plates OR the electrolysis plate.
I can find the electrode material from earlier papers, including foamed 3D surfaces from 2015, so I think there is no invention in the electrodes themselves. They've simply taken that from earlier papers.
And you wouldn't waste the surface area of a super capacitor with a non-functioning electrolysis plate, or the surface area of an electrolysis plate with a non-functioning supercapacitor. So I don't think this is an actual useful thing, nobody would do that.
So meh.
How about inventing one that takes CO2 out of the air, and turns it back into coal? Then we can employ all the out of work coal miners to put it back where it came from.
Hey, look at the bright side.
From the OP, we now know that the process of splitting water is called "water electrolysis".
That's the sort of information I come to Slashdot for!
A brief scan of the abstract, note that it uses "oxygen evolution reaction" with the acronym "OER" instead of "produces oxygen", uses LDH without defining it ("Layered Double Hydroxide"), "dual functionalities ... have been achieved" instead of "dual functions", or just "functions as both <a> and <b>",
Taking a sentence at random, and plugging it into an online analyzer results in:
Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading: (Gunning Fog index) 18.90
With a Flesch Reading Ease : 27.75
That's a pretty high level of jargon, almost reaching the level of techno-babble.
(The sentence: "When employed as the positive electrode in a supercapacitor, along with activated carbon as the negative electrode in an asymmetric configuration, the ultrathin and porous Ni-Co-Fe LDH nanoplatelets delivered an ultrahigh specific energy of 57.")
Now we're going to have all the clean energy we need but we'll run out of water and die.
#DeleteFacebook
You’re a real fucking moron.
Cobalt is the limiting agent for mass production of current chemistry lithium batteries so starting research on a new energy storage system and relying on Cobalt is stupid. Cobalt is currently only produced as a byproduct if Aluminum smelting and without a massive uptick in Aluminum usage there isn't going to be enough to electrify more than ~10 of world-wide vehicle fleets yet we have politicians deciding we're going to ban ICE vehicles in 20 years or less. Trying to divert that limiting resource from a competing tech that has a 20 year head start on economic development is a sure way to fail.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Storing energy as hydrogen and burning it in a car later is 3x less efficient than storing it in batteries. Hydrogen makes no sense. Get a battery electric vehicle instead.
If it's mainly just doing electrolysis, it needs water to make hydrogen. Then one of those nasty multi-year droughts happens and you can't have enough water for you, the yard, AND the car. Oops. Standard BEV doesn't need water except for the cooling system (controller, and possibly motor in high-output situations), and that only every couple of years in a small amount, so it keeps working off the standard solar panels on your roof.
degrasse and I know all about science. I bet he (and by transitivity I) knows more about science than you.
The hilarious thing is he got 2 mod points and you got none. Welcome to Slashdot 2017.
It's called a plant. Takes a while to complete the conversion process though.
See, pure hydrogen is a bitch to deal with. It's gaseous at STP and extremely low density so you need high pressures to get any reasonable energy density, and it's a tiny molecule so seeps through hoses and valves which are watertight and airtight. So taking sunlight and storing its energy in hydrogen presents huge engineering challengesl.
Plants ran into the exact same problem about a half billion years ago. Their solution was to attach the hydrogen molecules to carbon, producing a hydrocarbon chain. This turns it into a high density solid (sugar, carbohydrates, cellulose) that still retains most of the energy of pure hydrogen, but is much easier to handle and store. When these hydrocarbons are further cooked by time and pressure, you get our traditional fossil fuels - gas, oil, and coal.
That's the holy grail of biofuels - accelerate this process. Break down cellulose into shorter chains (sugars). Have bacteria partially digest the sugars to produce alcohol or even oil. Burn the alcohol as fuel and releasing the waste products into the atmosphere. Then new plants pull the waste products out of the atmosphere to make new cellulose, thus completing the cycle.
Never heard you complain about THAT!
I guess if global temperature continues to rise, we will have another Carboniferous period and the problem will solve itself.
Nickel is one of the dirtiest elements to obtain. They rape the earth and expend VAST amounts of fossil fuels to obtain it. Look it up.
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The bad news is that the great UCLA will sell out this invention to the oil companies who will pay millions to suppress this invention. So don't get excited or your hopes up. Like the several cures that were discovered and working several decades ago, this will be squashed by large corporations. Big money will kill it and greedy universities will sell out.