ScienceDaily (Aug. 1, 2008) — In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.
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.
Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. “This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said MIT’s Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”
Combine cheap, efficient energy storage with cheap, efficient solar power generation, and all of a sudden a future free of dependence on barbaric refugees from the middle ages for our energy needs looms before us.
This is the sort of thing I count on when I make predictions about the next 20-50 years. I can’t point to exact projects or discoveries, but I assume many of those necessary to support a Singularity will indeed occur.
Like this one.
In answer to the Steven Den Beste-style naysayers, those who prate about engineering “impossibilities” who say: “Solar power is too expensive, too inefficient, and would involve covering too much acreage to make a dent in American energy needs.”
Over the next ten years we will roll out cheap, high-efficiency solar power generation, and cheap, high-efficient power storage, creating this scenario: You cover the roof of your house with solar panels at a cost of fifty cents per square foot, and store your power in a “battery” in the basement for another few hundred bucks. And then you go off the power grid, including your electric car which is parked in the garage and juiced for a few hours overnight with its own high-efficiency battery that sucks on the home battery store.
How much of America’s roofs and/or back yards might end up generating power, do you think?
As much as Ohio’s acreage?
I have a great deal of respect for engineers, but remember: They follow, not lead, the science. And sneering at potential new technology as “magic” merely betrays the limitations of their own thinking.
UPDATE: Via Instapundit, more:
EETimes.com - MIT claims 24/7 solar power
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I tried to post an off topic comment on this last night, but my connection to the internet bombed out before I could post it. We have already achieved 42% efficiency of solar conversion to electricity in the lab and are testing materials capable of up to 63% efficiency. Now, with near 100% efficiency in conversion to hydrogen we are set to hit the big time with solar-electricity-hydrogen. With numbers like this, we could handily produce the entire current energy consumption of the United States in all forms of energy by lining the ditches and road allowances of all our roads with solar collecters.
Energy would be available locally, everywhere, in two forms - hydrogen and electricity. Transportation of energy would be a much smaller problem than currently touted by the nay sayers, because of the local nature of its production.
Still a little skeptical. Has anyone done the math on platinum electrodes? -THAT- ain’t an abundant material, man.
While I hope it’s real, the “cold fusion” press releases sounded vaguely familiar.
There are no actual numbers quoted here, or capital requirements for the system, or anything else. If anything, the article is has breathless promises about “breakthroughs”, “enormous implications” and so on - like the cancer cure releases like this that have been coming out for decades. One time one of these will actually be right, but I wouldn’t go apeshit over a single vague article.
Platinum may not be necessary, Avatar.
Something’s fishy here, probably the reporting. They state that one catalyst forms the oxygen and another the hydrogen, if I read the article properly. But if you took a water molecule and broke it apart to make oxygen, you’d automatically make hydrogen as well–that would be all that was left over.
Other than that, I hope the story is true. I still think, though, that the current capital costs of solar cells is a major obstacle. We need a major breakthrough there.
I’ll go apeshit over whatever I please, Mitch. There are some clues in this - for the rational - that tend to give it a bit more weight than the usual PR release from some tiny company trying to hype its stock price, or attract VC.
First, it comes out of MIT, not exactly an unknown, or disreputable, operation. Second, the enthusiastic evaluation is echoed by a reputable scientist not connected with the research, from an equally reputable location - Imperial College, London.
I realize that cynicism is considered the height of intellectual fashion, but simply because it’s fashionable doesn’t make it accurate or useful.
I can recall having similar discussions with cynical boobs ten years ago about e-book reader screens. These fatwits lectured me about the limits of battery and screen technology, and termed my prediction of workable ebook readers within ten years to be wishful thinking, or a belief in magic. Certainly, I was ignoring common sense engineering principles.
Fuck’em. I’m reading that ebook reader today.
Charles, there are always two electrodes in electrolysis. One is the cathode and the other is the anode. The electrodes supply or receive the electrons from the ions (H+ and OH-) which exist naturally in water.
Let’s do the math on platinum and let’s do it conservatively, so we’ll start by assuming that demand drives Pt up by a factor of 10 from its current price of about $53/gram to $530.00/gram.
Since the conversion is touted to be nearly 100% efficient 1 square cm of Pt plated electrode should easily be able to handle 100 amps, which is 6.24 * 10^24 electrons/second. In 2000 seconds Avogadro’s number of H2 molecules would be produced, which weighs 2 grams. Hydrogen has 3 times the energy density of gasoline, so every 2000 seconds we are producing the energy equivalent of 6 grams or 6/.7 = 8.5 cm^3 of gasoline. This is a liter of gasoline energy equivalent every 63 hours. Assuming 8 hours per day of sun for 180 days per year we are looking at a production from 1 cm^2 Pt plate of 22 liters of gasoline. At .80 cents/ liter (local pre spike value) this is $17.60 worth of gas ($Cdn and $US are near par).
1 square cm of Pt plate 10 atoms thick (that’s lots) would weigh 5.36 micrograms (I leave the arithmetic for the reader). At the demand driven inflated price of $530/gm Pt, the 1 square centimeter electrode would have about .3 cents worth of platinum in it. That’s $17.60 worth of gasoline equivalent energy per year for a .3 cent investment in platinum.
Sorry, Tom, maybe I was a bit unclear (it happens). I was simply saying that if you found a process to extract gaseous oxygen from the water, the hydrogen would be there for the taking automatically. I know there are always two electrodes in electrolysis. I was commenting on the need for two catalysts, and the way it was presented in the article, which struck me as kind of sloppy.
EE Times writeup.
IMO both articles’ emphasis on SOLAR masks the fact that what’s been developed here is “just” a “better battery.” But any source of electricity works to “charge” it: Windmills, off-peak hydro, off-peak nuclear, etc. Add this to our existing generation-distribution system, and we can significantly increase peak capacity, replace some of the expen$ive natural-gas-fired peaking plants we have now, or both… without installing a single photovoltaic cell.
Executive summary:
· Claimed 90% improvement in efficiency (same amount of gas produced with only 10% of the energy required by current electrolyzers).
· Cobalt Phosphate catalyst easier to handle and far less toxic than currently used nickel oxide. (MIT calls it “green,” we’ll see what the Luddites have to say.)
· Less expensive equipment because you don’t need the extensive environmental isolation required by nickel oxide process.
Question for the house: What’s the efficiency/scalability of current fuel cell technology? (Or with near-100% creation efficiency, would it be economical to just burn the H2+O2 in a gas turbine?)
…and speaking of the Luddites:
(Slashdot post “writ sarcastic,” I’m sure- but I can imagine fearmongering like this. ‘Course then we could hand ‘em a copy of Asimov’s “Martian Way,” and tell ‘em to STFU.)
Go to your auto parts store and check the platinum spark plugs.
The first year less than 50,000 homes by the 5th year 1 mill. No matter how cheap it will take time to catch on. Once it does they’ll be converting as fast as they can get the material. I expect apartments, dorms and condos where utilities are included to be among the first(greed is a great motivator). They will also allow people with cabins in hard to reach spots to have electric appliances, so I expect the Bass Pro catalog to have them as soon as they can.
Okay, here’s yesterdays story on fuel cell efficiency. Fuel Cell Efficiency May Be Improved With Material With ‘Colossal Ionic Conductivity’.
The new material apparently conducts oxygen ions at room temperature almost one hundred million times better than previous materials. The room temperature fuel cell will be more efficient because the exhaust will not be hot water vapour carrying away energy. There’s a lot of lost energy in water vapour at 180 F degrees compared with liquid water at room temp.
This is from Oak Ridge. So that’s two big stories on the same day, one dealing with a big improvement in handling oxygen in electrolysis cells and the other dealing with a big improvement for handling oxygen in fuel cells.
And here is a layman’s explanation of the principles and significance of the MIT discovery.
Bill,
My day job as an engineer does not mask what I still think of myself as: a physicist. Nuclear engineering is, after all, simply applied physics. Anyway, while there are a bunch of hidebound individuals in my industry, there are a lot more like me who are, shall we say, open to the possibilities. My point is simply that there are a bunch of engineers out there who like to focus on the solutions, rather than the problems. The older, “we’ve always done it that way” group are thankfully heading into retirement over the next decade.
Even if Black Racist Jesus wins this fall, I look forward to the next 10-15 years. I think that we’re in for surprises as yet undreamed of.
Two thoughts here: 1. My suspicion is that MIT’s marketing people took something that they saw in the dark recesses of a lab, smoked some ditch weed that night, and wrote some PR releases while under the influence. I have 25 years as an engineering designer, working contract assignments around the country in a variety of industries. IMNSHO, marketing is always making ridiculous claims, and then blaming the engineeering department when the real world intrudes. This seems to be one of those cases, until the hard numbers get crunched. Colleges are not immune to this kind of nonsense, especially when federal research money is at stake.
2. In response to physics geek about hidebound engineers retiring soon, halellujah, I am contracting for a very large defense firm as a mechanical designer, and working with several under 30 engineers. These are common traits among them: no knowledge of solid modeling software and proud of it; no interest in going onto the shop floor to talk with the machinists and others who have to build their fairy dust McProduct; expertise in creating Power Points that bear little resemblance to the physical item(s); abysmal grammar and understanding of English; never have touched a tool in their lives; total disdain for the shop people and the designers/detailers who have to render their fairy dust into blueprints and tool paths. That’s fine with me; I make more than enough to let their disdain roll off my weightlifter’s shoulders.
These kids have their BSMEs, they dress for success, they are all working on their MBAs, and they spend most of their work hours instant messaging each other. Since I came back from taking a few years off for school, this has been the pattern at all of the places I have worked in a professional capacity.
Yes, there are exceptions to this, but they seem to be fewer and fewer. Coupled with the declining interest in engineering as a career(see the letters page on AW&ST, any issue), and it hard to say who will be build these products. The kids??? They would be lost using Legos on their own without a detailed guide.
Nice blabber, Don, but not one solid word of disproof of this announcement.
Try it somewhere else. You earn no credit here with crap like this.