Subject: [Homestead] Solar hydrogen from Aussie titanium oxide
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 11:06:56 -0700
Solving the economics of hydrogen production from renewables ia a big
step forward, but other obstacles remain, i.e., how do you store the
damned stuff in vehicle tanks and what are now gasoline retailers.
Hydrogen is economically impractical to compress, current storage
systems using metal hydrides are still too inefficient for either
vehicles or a hydrogen retailer.
Source: University Of New South Wales
Date: 2004-08-26
Vast New Energy Source Almost Here: Solar Hydrogen Fuel Dream Will Soon
Be A Reality, Australian Scientists Predict
Australian scientists predict that a revolutionary new way to harness
the power of the sun to extract clean and almost unlimited energy
supplies from water will be a reality within seven years.
Using special titanium oxide ceramics that harvest sunlight and split
water to produce hydrogen fuel, the researchers say it will then be a
simple engineering exercise to make an energy-harvesting device with no
moving parts and emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants.
It would be the cheapest, cleanest and most abundant energy source ever
developed: the main by-products would be oxygen and water.
"This is potentially huge, with a market the size of all the existing
markets for coal, oil and gas combined," says Professor Janusz Nowotny,
who with Professor Chris Sorrell is leading a solar hydrogen research
project at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Centre for Materials
and Energy Conversion. The team is thought to be the most advanced in
developing the cheap, light-sensitive materials that will be the basis
of the technology.
"Based on our research results, we know we are on the right track and
with the right support we now estimate that we can deliver a new
material within seven years," says Nowotny.
Sorrell says Australia is ideally placed to take advantage of the
enormous potential of this new technology: "We have abundant sunlight,
huge reserves of titanium and we're close to the burgeoning energy
markets of the Asia-Pacific region. But this technology could be used
anywhere in the world. It's been the dream of many people for a long
time to develop it and it's exciting to know that it is now within such
close reach."
The results of the team's work will be presented in Sydney on 27 August
to delegates from Japan, Germany, the United States and Australia at a
one-day International Conference on Materials for Hydrogen Energy at UNSW.
Among them will be the inventors of the solar hydrogen process,
Professors Akira Fujishima and Kenichi Honda. Both are frontrunners for
the Nobel Prize in chemistry and are the laureates of the 2004 Japan Prize.
Since the Japanese researchers' 1971 discoveries, science has made major
advances in achieving one of the ultimate goals of science and
technology – the design of materials required to split water using solar
light.
The UNSW team opted to use titania ceramic photoelectrodes because they
have the right semiconducting properties and the highest resistance to
water corrosion.
Solar hydrogen, Professor Sorrell argues, is not incompatible with coal.
It can be used to produce solar methanol, which produces less carbon
dioxide than conventional methods. "As a mid-term energy carrier it has
a lot to say for it," he says.
This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University Of
New South Wales.
[Homestead] Solar hydrogen from Aussie titanium oxide,
Tvoivozhd, 08/27/2004