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Scientists at MIT have created what may be the first practical artificial leaf -- a device about the size of a playing card capable of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen and storing the energy in a fuel cell. Placing the leaf it in a single gallon of water in sunlight could produce enough electricity to supply a house in developing countries with its daily electricity requirement, according to researchers.
Emerging Tech: Power Plant: One Small Leaf Could Electrify an Entire Home
Seeded on Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:39 PM EDT
Article Source: technewsworld.com- Enjoy this article? Help vote it up the 'Vine.
- Public Discussion (14)
Clipped to several groups.
One of the two issues with Hydrogen was the amount of energy it took to convert water to Hydrogen. I'm pleased to see that mother nature provided the alternative to conversation by using sunlight.
I would ask that congress fund the energy department to fund more along this line of research.
- 4 votes
#2 - Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:11 PM EDTthis has huge implacations, not just for energy production but for production of drinking water. The water created by generating the electricity is pure H2O.
- 4 votes
#3 - Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:27 PM EDT" enough electricity to supply a house in developing countries with its daily electricity requirement", is this some new unit of measurement we now use in popular science stories.
- 1 vote
#4 - Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:41 PM EDTYeah,right?
Interesting stuff. We'll see more innovation.
- 2 votes
That is because American houses waste an enormous amount of electricity.
- 4 votes
You might be able to tell from the articles on my page that I am a skeptic and critic of alternative energy schemes; however, this development is interesting, I am willing to keep an open mind, and I will be looking for more information. I support reasonable R&D efforts.
I have big problems when implementation gets ahead of practicality and we do things like waste money on wind turbines and solar panels where they make no sense, just because they're supposedly "green".
I am interested in this "artificial leaf" technology, and will be looking for more hard information. I will agree with BLOGER-486140 (comment 4 above) that the detail in this article is lacking and not very specific, which causes doubt; but I will keep and open mind. If this is as promising as claimed, I would support R&D dollars for it.
My fear is that, before too long, we'll have another alternative energy snake oil salesman wanting a $100 million government grant to put 10,000 gallon jugs of water on the roof of the local mall to generate enough electricity to run the EXIT signs.
- 6 votes
#5 - Mon Mar 28, 2011 10:05 PM EDTPCI (Post Carbon Institute) is very doom and gloom about this in their PCR (Post Carbon Reader). Is this the state of the Bay Area today?
- 2 votes
#6 - Mon Mar 28, 2011 10:22 PM EDTI just seeded a link to Dr. Daniel Nocera's actual video presentation of his "artificial leaf" technology to the American Chemical Society.
- 3 votes
#7 - Mon Mar 28, 2011 10:31 PM EDTHow lomg do you think it will take the powers that be to bury it?
- 2 votes
#8 - Mon Mar 28, 2011 10:34 PM EDTThis could be big, I just googled "mit creates artificial leaf" and got more than 4 million hits in just a few seconds.
- 3 votes
#9 - Tue Mar 29, 2011 12:39 AM EDTYou're in Easy Mode. If you prefer, you can use XHTML Mode instead. |
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