I love the idea of solar power, but the whole, what happens at night thing, really does tend to work against it. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with an alternative way of storing solar power and it looks a very interesting proposition. The system uses solar power to break water into hydrogen and oxygen; which can then be used as fuel.
The benefit of the fuel cell approach is that it costs a lot less than capacitor or battery arrangements. This could be an enormous step forward for solar power, so long as necessary safety measures are in place; hydrogen has massive explosive potential and oxygen is an accelerant, which makes for a potentially devastating explosion. Still, explosive gases can be stored safely and I am sure that this has been a consideration. [Science Daily via Popular Science, Chemsec (Image)]
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Tags: environmentally-friendly, fuel cell, Science, solar power, Technology
1 response
Sep 7, 2008 at 11:25 am
Can anyone tell me why hydrogen is one of the most plentiful gases in the universe?
It’s because nothing in nature contains it for very long. Hydrogen atoms are so small they bounce (collide) off of other particles and eventually they will emerge on the other side of almost any barrier. Steel cannot hold Hydrogen, there are a few man made products, and I think one of them is called Barium or something like that.
These man made items take large amounts of resources and energy to produce, causing us to use even move of our planets natural resources. The splitting of the Hydrogen gas into two items also takes a lot of energy, especially on the scale we are talking about. Once split for shipping and handling purposes, you basically are handling two separate bombs far more explosive than any petroleum based product. Once the two gases arrive at there destination they must be recombined. I have no idea on the amount of energy this would take. It seems to me that we will be using 3 to 4 times the amount of fossil fuel (pollution) to produce this new form of clean and environmentally safe energy. Also all transportation will still be tethered to the pump.
The fuel cell is a good idea as a backup power source not the main power source!
I wonder which large corporations are at the leading edge of fuel cell research; also which large corporations own them, Exxon, Mobile…
I don’t know anything about photovoltaic cells (solar Power) except I would not be tethered to a corporate owned refueling station, except when traveling or on a cloudy day or at night…(Problems to overcome). With a solar cell on the roof a battery in the garage, recharging your vehicle is just as easy as recharging your cell phone utilizing blue tooth wireless technology. It seams to me a free energy source is a far more logical choice. I know solar power has its own set of problems, but sunlight is plentiful and free all around the globe.
Question: Dose the planet or the life on it need Hydrogen. Will there be any affect to the planets water if we remove that much hydrogen from it. Could we be trading one crisis (Global warming) for another one farther down the road.
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