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There has just been a major breakthrough in the field of solar energy. We’re not talking some small thing … This is a HUGE breakthrough! Apparently, researchers have discovered a cheap and easy way to create hydrogen gas. If so, this literally could change everything!

The implications of this discovery could be immense. Using solar energy to split water into its ‘two parts hydrogen’ and ‘one part oxygen’ has long been a dream. Then we could capture the hydrogen gas, and release this energy source on demand.

Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims to have invented a way to do just that both easily and efficiently. If this is so, it will change everything. Our energy crisis would be over. Literally everything would change.

The Problem

While solar energy has always been one of the most ideal options for overcoming our current energy crisis, several obstacles have got in the way of its rapid global spread. These obstacles include

•    not everywhere experiences long periods of good quality sunshine

•    therefore solar cells only produce their peak output for a few hours per day

•    the task of storing the energy once harnessed is complex

•    the cost of solar panels

•    the shortage of silicon, the main material to construct solar panels

While these obstacles seem quite large, the opportunity for solar energy has always remained within range. We’ve been looking for that special breakthrough. Now, we think that Eureka! moment has occurred.

The Solution

Let’s look in another direction for the solution. Consider the possibility that the sun’s energy could be put to use, not to create heat, but instead to create hydrogen gas. Using a special catalyst, sunlight could split water, delivering vast amounts of hydrogen. The hydrogen can then be burned or run through a fuel cell to generate electricity whenever it’s needed, including when the sun isn’t shining.

If you can generate oxygen from a glass of water by splitting water molecules, then that reaction frees hydrogen ions to make hydrogen gas. Scientists have been searching for the catalyst that can do this. The problem has been to design molecular catalysts in which the catalyst can last as long as possible. Nocera’s catalyst, which is easy and cheap to make, lasts and lasts, generating vast amounts of hydrogen using sunlight to power the reactions.

Scientists have been working on this concept for a while, but the catalyst has proved elusive. Now, Nocera has developed a catalyst that is amorphous (i.e. it doesn’t have a regular structure) and relatively unstable. So, while it breaks down as it does its work, the catalyst is able to constantly regenerate, repairing itself as it goes along, so it can continue working, producing more and more hydrogen.

The Testimonial

Karsten Meyer, a professor of chemistry at Friedrich Alexander University, in Germany said, “This is probably the most important single discovery of the century.”

The New Possibility

For some time now, many chemical research groups have been seeking to re-create artificial photosynthesis, to mimic how plants use sunlight to split water to make usable energy. In this field of research, this discovery is as big as it gets.

Storing solar energy in the form of hydrogen hasn’t been practical because the reaction required too much energy and suitable catalysts were too expensive or the materials needed were too rare. Nocera’s catalyst clears the way for cheap and abundant water-splitting technologies.

Using sunlight to power the reaction that splits water and thereby creates a cheap way of storing solar energy in the form of hydrogen, (from water to hydrogen gas) this is a major advance in inorganic chemistry. With this one revolutionary discovery, we may have overcome so many of the key obstacles for solar power that it might now be able to take over from fossil fuels as our predominant energy resource.

“This discovery is simply groundbreaking,” says Meyer, and we agree. Good work Mr. Nocera. Good work indeed!

from Sam Deane,
your solar energy guide,
at www dot go solar power for homes dot com

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Info via abcnews.com Pic via: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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