Turning a Major Corner in Energy?

It is funny, but humans are quite good at inventing needed technology just-in-time to save themselves from a current crisis. The crisis-de-jour is carbon-based energy's threat to the climate and the simultaneous running-out-of-oil crisis. Well, it looks like that old knight in shining armour -- science & technology -- has rode into the rescue yet again...

An MIT research group under Daniel Nocera claims to have invented a cheap, safe method to store solar power to feed a fuel cell. This is the missing piece to turn solar power from a "only when the sun is out" energy source to one that acts as a mini-power station that operates in two modes:

1. When the sun is shining you can directly tap energy from solar cells while hiving off any excess energy generation to Nocera's storage system.
2. When night falls and you need energy, then Nocera's storage system will generate the oxygen & hydrogen which will run a fuel cell to generate energy.

This does appear to be a major step in making solar energy useful and unblocks the road to allowing solar power to be a major energy source. Here is a relevant quote from an independent observer:

James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.

"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London. "The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem."

Here is Nocera's take on his group's invention:

"This is just the beginning," said Nocera, principal investigator for the Solar Revolution Project funded by the Chesonis Family Foundation and co-Director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. "The scientific community is really going to run with this."

Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.

The news release from MIT is here and includes a video interview with Daniel Nocera.

I can't resist adding the following...

The above is a major significant new technology, but at the same time new technology is advancing on other fronts. For example, here is a report from Monash University in Australia that they have developed a more efficient fuel cell that is less significant, but shows that advances are being made on all fronts:

University scientists have revolutionised the design of fuel cells used in the latest generation of hybrid cars which could make the vehicles more reliable and cheaper to build.

The breakthrough, published today in the journal Science, revolves around the design of a fuel cell in which a specially-coated form of popular high tech outdoor and sporting clothing material Goretex is the key component. ...

Monash University's Professor Doug MacFarlane from the Australian Centre for Electromaterials Science (ACES) said the discovery was probably the most important development in fuel cell technology in the last 20 years. ...

"The important point to stress is that the team has come up with an alternative fuel cell design that is more economical, more easily sourced, outlasts platinum cells and is just as effective."

And yet another technological advance relevant to fuel cells is reported from Oak Ridge National Labs:

The material, a super-lattice developed by researchers in Spain, improves ionic conductivity near room temperature by a factor of almost 100 million, representing "a colossal increase in ionic conduction properties," said Maria Varela of ORNL's Materials Science and Technology Division, who characterized the material's structure with senior researcher Stephen Pennycook.

The paper, a collaboration between researchers at the Universities of Madrid and at ORNL, was published today in Science. ...

Solid oxide fuel cell technology requires ion-conducting materials -- solid electrolytes -- that allow oxygen ions to travel from cathode to anode. However, existing materials have not provided atom-scale voids large enough to easily accommodate the path of a conducted ion, which is much bigger than, for example, an electron.

"The new layered material solves this problem by combining two materials with very different crystal structures. The mismatch triggers a distortion of the atomic arrangement at their interface and creates a pathway through which ions can easily travel," Varela said. ...

Unlike previous fuel cell materials, which have to achieve high temperatures to conduct ions, the new material maintains ionic conductivity near room temperatures. High temperatures have been a major roadblock for developers of fuel cell technology.