With Artificial Photosynthesis, A Bottle of Water Could Produce Enough Energy To Power A House
By Stuart Fox Posted 03.04.2010 at 4:54 pm 58 Comments

Potential Energy Cells? shrff14, via Flickr.com
One of the interesting side effects of last year's stimulus bill was $400 million in funding for ARPA-E, the civilian, energy-focused cousin of DARPA. And in this week's first ever ARPA-E conference, MIT chemist Dan Nocera showed how well he put that stimulus money to use by highlighting his new photosynthetic process. Using a special catalyst, the process splits water into oxygen and hydrogen fuel efficiently enough to power a home using only sunlight and a bottle of water.

Like organic photosynthesis, Nocera's reaction uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and energy. However, whereas plants create energy in the form of sugars, this process creates energy in the form of free hydrogen. That hydrogen can either be recombined with the oxygen in a fuel cell to generate electricity, or converted into a liquid fuel.

In about four hours, water treated with Nocera's catalyst can produce 30 kilowatt-hours of energy. Moreover, the process is cheap. So cheap, in fact, that Nocera has no problem envisioning a day when each house generates its own fuel and electricity from photosynthesis.

But don't take my word for it. Check out this video and hear Nocera describe this process himself:


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Student Invents Material With Highest Known Hydrogen Storage Capacity

Written by Nick Chambers
Published on March 4th, 2010
16 CommentsPosted in Fuel Cells, Hydrogen

A Ph.D. student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has developed a new method for storing large amounts of hydrogen at room temperature using a version of the super-material graphene. Reportedly his material is inexpensive, easy to produce, and can store almost twice the amount of hydrogen than the U.S. Department of Energy’s ultimate target of 7.5% by weight at room temperature.


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One of the biggest stumbling blocks to the widespread introduction of hydrogen-based vehicles is the fact that storing it with current technologies requires huge amounts of effort for little reward. Hydrogen itself is such a low-energy-density substance that you have to find ways to compress gigantic amounts of it into very small spaces to make it usable.

Up to now the available technologies were either putting it in a tank under very high pressure (read: explosive), or cooling it to incredibly low temperatures (like a couple hundred degrees celsius below freezing) and turning it into a liquid and then putting it in a tank (read: waste of energy). You might see how neither of these are really the optimal solution to storing hydrogen.

The holy grail of hydrogen storage would be a material that can collect huge amounts of it in a lightweight and compact form at room temperature—getting around the masses of energy needed to simply store it in the first place.

Well, now a bright student has figured out how to do just that—and then some. Javad Rafiee is a doctoral student in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer. To come up with his solution, he used a combination of “mechanical grinding, plasma treatment, and annealing” to maximize graphene’s hydrogen storage capacity. The nanoscopic graphene molecules are arranged in a “chain-link” fence structure providing an extremely high surface area for the hydrogen to cling to. Couple that with graphene’s earth-shatteringly low density and you have the holy grail of hydrogen storage.

Javad recently won a $30,000 student prize for his work, but I’m thinking that’s just the beginning for this whiz kid. I’m sure there are plenty of other hurdles to overcome in this quest, such as how to get the hydrogen in and out of the structure quickly and how to scale it up and commercialize it, but, nonetheless, it’s exciting.

Source: EurekAlert!

If folks do not get excited about this then they are CLUELESS. This is Massive in importance.

If there are other stories like this in which some stimulus money was slipped to some very noble sources and covered up with all the waste from it so that TPTB didnt realize what was going on then we may very well be seeing a possible revolution in energy advancement.

Its been my own view that water will become the major energy supplier in the future. It would be a reason why this world would be heavily focused upon by possible civilizations within our Galaxy. We have all heard the stories of large USO's reported by such sources as even Navy personnel.

Water is H2O. A combination of the two most flammable elements in known existence. With two parts hydrogen it is even better. Will be interesting if some more of that stimulus money was funnelled towards recipients that could now begin to produce production models that can put to practice the methods.

Nothing else will have the massive affect on our lives like advancement in energy technology and propulsion technology.

To add to this, look up information on the VASIMR rocket. Exciting times folks.

This is a huge breakthrough, your right. You can imagine how easy it would be to adapt to such a harmless,free, and unlimited amount of power! This kind of technology can end all the problems that our world faces in no time! Sadly free energy and independence is not on the agenda of the major players in the world (ptb) and it seems like anything that can bebefit the planet gets hidden away from the public. Our world buisness mentality that rules the world through oppression is sickening to me! Free energy is availible in many forms at this very moment but is being held back by the ptb who want complete control over the planet and do not wish to share with anyone

Well, if some other capable hands got a hold of some stimulus money then it could be possible. This wont have to start on a massive scale, it just has to start.

The Energy Powers that Be do not want to have all their built up infrastructure investments become worthless. It is why energy possibilities like this have never been addressed by the government, because the government is indeed bought out by these interests. We all know this now. How many of us are now watching for tidbits of positive news like this?

Competition will in the end win out. The Crash will ensure such.

I'm not excited about this anymore, I've seen lot's of these articles, but never found any of these inventions in a shop.
I do believe/know that they exist, 'free' / non polluting energy systems but never for the 'people'.
Sure, I can buy for instance solar panels, but they are way to expensive, not efficient.
For me this is just another, payed by the people, project that will never get to the people.

I'm thinking of the 1996 movie Chain Reaction.
With regards to this discovery do you need to use drinking water or would undrinkable sea water suffice?
Sorry i am in a hurry..

My thoughts exactly. This guy will probably get a contract with DARPA and disappear into the MIC (especially considering he was funded by ARPA), just like other scientists with earth-changing inventions. Don't ever forget about Dr. Ning Li.

Solid water (ice) is quite abundant in at least our solar system, and one would assume, our universe. Saying that aliens have to come to us to get water is ridiculous. They've mastered interstellar travel, but don't have microwaves, apparently...

Here's hoping this energy claim gets some more press, though. Hats off to America's scientists.