Power Plant: One Small Leaf Could Electrify an Entire Home

[bloomington-lib]

Source: TechNewsWorld

A team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed what it describes as the first practical artificial leaf.

"You can think of this as the first dark solar energy because it'll give you solar energy at night in the form of light," Howe added.

Placing the artificial leaf it in a single gallon of water in bright sunlight could produce enough electricity to supply a house in developing countries with its daily electricity requirement, Nocera has claimed.

"One of the problems with solar rays is that they heat up the equipment you use excessively," McGregor explained. "After a certain period, the equipment gets so hot that efficiency goes down. So you want to try to mimic nature and create an ecosystem where all these technologies -- thermal, solar and hydrogen -- work together," he said

Read more: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Power-Plant-One-Small-Leaf-Could-Electrify-an-Entire-Home-72156.html?wlc=1301359069

[freshwest]

1. Great!

[aquart]

2. Oooooooh.

I wish I was that smart. This is such a kicky problem to be working on.

[wtmusic]

3. This story from 2008 gets more and more mangled by the media.

"The Magic Leaf That Can Power an Entire Home" is accurately described here

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/21155/?a=f

[bhikkhu]

11. Good link - unlikely claims (so far)

Basically it describes a more or less conventional fuel cell. Anyone who's followed fuel cell development over the years can safely roll their eyes and sigh:

"There's also still much engineering work to be done before Nocera's catalyst is incorporated into commercial devices. It will, for example, be necessary to improve the rate at which his catalyst produces oxygen. Nocera and others are confident that the engineering can be done quickly because the catalyst is easy to make, allowing a lot of researchers to start working with it without delay. " From the article, dated July 2008.

[wtmusic]

13. It's like a fuel cell, but backwards

it splits water into hydrogen/oxygen using sunlight. Fuel cells combine the two back together to create electricity.

IMO it's a pretty amazing discovery, but it could take a decade before a practical implementation is ready.

[marginlized]

4. Here's Nocera's 2009 presentation on "Personal Energy"

At MIT World.
He's talking about much the same technology. But in the technewsworld and other articles today, he's actually talking in more detail about the chemistry he's using.

Science Daily has the same news:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110327191042.htm

Video:
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/728

[Poll_Blind]

5. Oh, I thought they were talkin' about ganja!

K&R anyway!

PB

[Auggie]

6. So if one leaf the size of poker card could power a third world home...

could many, many full decks help shut down a Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant or two?

:)

[Phlem]

7. +1

and amen to that sista. :toast:

-p

[Stumbler]

9. Sounds like a good plan to me

Though I suspect it 'won't be commercially available' until the boys at GE learn how to hold all the aces & face cards...

[Auggie]

22. My thought too

[Moostache]

8. Yeah...good luck with getting THAT past our Petro-banking dictators!

No chance in hell would they allow something as abundant and cheap as sunlight cut in on their profit train...they would just as soon scorch the skies a la "The Matrix" and other sci-fi than allow their gravy train to expire.

[highplainsdem]

16. Nocera has already signed a deal with an Indian multinational. See my replies below.

[Ex Lurker]

10. It'll end up in a big warehouse next to the Lost Ark and the Roswell saucer nt.

[highplainsdem]

18. No, it won't. See my replies below.

[Ex Lurker]

19. I wasn't mocking the discovery

I was doubting it will ever get in production until "they" are good and ready to sell it to us at maximum profit.

[TygrBright]

12. Duzzis have anything to do with "cold fusion"? n/t

[highplainsdem]

14. Wikipedia articles on Nocera and the Indian multinational he signed with to commercialize his work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_G._Nocera

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Group

[highplainsdem]

15. Leaf-Mimicking Catalyst Inventor Signs Huge Contract With Tata Group for Hydrogen-From-Water Device

http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2011/03/24/daniel-nocera-tata-group/

Leaf-Mimicking Catalyst Inventor Signs Huge Contract With Tata Group for Hydrogen-From-Water Device
March 24, 2011


MIT professor Daniel Nocera, the inventor of a type of electrolysis that mimics the plants photosynthesis, and Ratan Tata, the CEO of the Indian Tata group, have signed a funding agreement allowing the Tata group to commercialize Nocera’s invention which produces power from water.

Tata signed the agreement that should be able to guarantee the building of a small power plant the size of a refrigerator in about a year and a half. Although the research is still at its beginnings, Nocera and Tata’s plan is based on what’s been realized so far.

Nocera says that, when completed, the device will be able to power a home by only using a bottle of water. He estimates that the world’s current electricity need stretches to 14 terrawatts, with the perspective of increasing to 16 TW by 2050. He also states that we will be able to supply all of the world’s needs by only using a pool of water a day.

Although it sounds impossible, there have been entire generations of scientists that, since the beginning of the 20th century dreamed to split up water in an energy-efficient manner, and use any kind of water for that matter. Nocera finalized his first satisfactory-working “artificial leaf” about a month and a half ago, coated with a proprietary solution of cobalt and phosphate, into a jar of water and coaxed to generate power at efficiencies that now exceed solar panels.

-snip-

[highplainsdem]

17. Tata signs up MIT energy guru for power from water

http://www.livemint.com/2011/03/23001656/Tata-signs-up-MIT-energy-guru.html

Bangalore: In the first such effort, Tata group chairman Ratan Tata has signed on a leading scientist from the globally renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to commercialize cutting-edge research that promises to produce cheap power from water.

Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry and energy, and his group of elite scientists at MIT attracted attention from Tata when he heard they had found a way towards one of science’s holy grails—to imitate photosynthesis, the process by which plants breathe, and produce power while doing so.

-snip-

As he did with the Nano small car and the Swach non-electric water purifier, Tata hopes Nocera’s solution will be the latest in the group’s effort to serve the “bottom of the pyramid” and turn a profit while doing so, said a Tata group executive who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Tata’s hope is that Nocera’s “personalized energy” can produce a stand-alone, mini-power plant, perhaps a refrigerator-sized box, that could reinvent rural electricity supply and bring power to about three billion people worldwide who don’t have it.

-snip-

[reggie the dog]

20. India could lead the way

they dont have the oil necessary for their economic development and they don't seem to have the desire to stay dependent upon oil.

[IDemo]

21. "to serve those at the bottom of the pyramid."

That sounds like one corporation I could get behind, in a world of those who are focused on serving the apex of the pyramid.

[chillspike]

25. TaTa was supposed to give us the Air Car in 2010

Where is it?

I hope this doesn't go the way of that.

[1monster]

23. Why are these green energy innovations always labeled for "developing

countries"?

These clean energy systems are desperately needed by developed countries that as we breathe are poisoning our Earth. Yes, give this technologies to developing countries so they don't make the same dreadful mistakes that have already been made in developed countires; but also implement here and in Germany and China and India and England, etc., on and on... Now.

Or the new overlords of the Earth are not going to be humanoids. They will be roaches.

[chillspike]

24. Dr. Dan Nocera explains it himself in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTtmU2lD97o&feature=related

[shanti]

26. heh!

i thought the story was about cannabis, the magic plant! ;-)