PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have combined a liquid catalyst with photovoltaic cells to achieve what they claim is a solar energy system that could generate electricity around the clock.
A liquid catalyst was added to water before electrolysis to achieve what the researchers claim is almost 100-percent efficiency. When combined with photovoltaic cells to store energy chemically, the resulting solar energy systems could generate electricity around the clock, the MIT team said.
“What we have done is made a catalyst work for the oxygen part without any extra energy. In fact, with our catalyst almost 100 percent of the current used for electrolysis goes into making oxygen and hydrogen.”
I’ve been skeptical of hydrogen technology as well as alternative energy sources such as wind or solar. The problem with hydrogen is that it’s a way of storing energy and hasn’t been all efficient in that a lot of energy was lost in the process of producing it. If you can split the water molecule and not lose any energy that makes hydrogen a viable way of powering equipment.
Then if you can use hydrogen to store wind or solar power that makes those energy sources a lot more viable. You can store wind energy by producing hydrogen and when the wind’s not blowing you can get electricity by running the hydrogen through a fuel cell. (Or you could just run cars or tractors with the excess hydrogen.) The same sort of thing could be done with solar energy of course.
A lot of these announcements never pan out, but I have to admit that IF this works out it could change the world.