"Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy."
This article and numerous others such as Solar-Power Breakthrough describe the work of Prof. Daniel Nocera of MIT to develop an inexpensive catalyst that generates oxygen from water at room temperature and a neutral pH. The catalyst is amorphous and relatively unstable, but can constantly repair itself. When combined with an catalyst such as platinum which produces hydrogen, water can be split into its components which can then be stored and later used in a fuel cell to generate electricity or burned to produce heat or motion.
A number of the articles emphasize that this discovery was inspired by photosynthesis, without explaining the connection. At present, plants still have an edge in terms of integrated the capture of solar energy, the transformation into stable compounds and the ability to use that stored energy at will. Although Nocera's discovery shows great promise, it is only a part of the system. At present, an external electricity source is required, although research is underway to generate electricity internally so that the reaction can be run using just sunlight. Hydrogen is also difficult to store and transport, due to its small molecular size. Finally, the technology appears to have little connection with photosynthesis, at least compared to Monash team learns from nature to split water.
Thanks to Ian Abbott-Donnelly and Jean-Francois Barsoum for the pointers!
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