A U.S. scientist has developed a new way of powering fuel cells that could make it practical for home owners to store solar energy and produce electricity to run lights and appliances at night.
A new catalyst produces the oxygen and hydrogen that fuel cells use to generate electricity, while using far less energy than current methods. With this catalyst, users could rely on electricity produced by photovoltaic solar cells to power the process that produces the fuel, said the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who developed the new material…
Most U.S. homes with solar panels feed electricity into the power grid during the day, but have to draw back from the grid at night. Nocera said his development would allow homeowners to bank solar energy as hydrogen and oxygen, which a fuel cell could use to produce electricity when the sun was not shining…
Nocera’s catalyst is made from cobalt, phosphate and an electrode that produces oxygen from water by using 90 percent less electricity than current methods, which use the costly metal platinum…
“It’s cheap, it’s efficient, it’s highly manufacturable, it’s incredibly tolerant of impurity and it’s from earth-abundant stuff,” Nocera explained.
I for one hope that the guy at MIT sells it here in the Philippines. I have been telling people that is close to me that the crude oil will eventually be depleted a few years back. It is a non renewable power. It is only a matter of when. And now we are really experiencing the high cost of fuel. This has affected me personally since I commute everyday to work. The fare suddenly becomes high, while my salary stays the same.
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