Tech | March 06, 2010 | 8 comments

With Artificial Photosynthesis, A Bottle of Water Could Produce Enough Energy To Power A House

source: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/video-artificial-photosynthesis-produces-en...

unimatrix0
One of the interesting side effects of last year's stimulus bill was $400 million in funding for ARPA-E, the civilian, energy-focused cousin of DARPA. And in this week's first ever ARPA-E conference, MIT chemist Dan Nocera showed how well he put that stimulus money to use by highlighting his new photosynthetic process. Using a special catalyst, the process splits water into oxygen and hydrogen fuel efficiently enough to power a home using only sunlight and a bottle of water.
Like organic photosynthesis, Nocera's reaction uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and energy. However, whereas plants create energy in the form of sugars, this process creates energy in the form of free hydrogen. That hydrogen can either be recombined with the oxygen in a fuel cell to generate electricity, or converted into a liquid fuel.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/video-artificial-photosynthesis...
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    Community,   Tech,   Green,   Science,   1 more
  2. tags:
    Energy,  Water Waste
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8 comments // With Artificial Photosynthesis, A Bottle of Water Could Produce Enough Energy To Power A House // Video

  • Almibry
  • MindsiMedia
    • 0
      MindsiMedia  

    • How about if we sink that 8 billion dollars we were going to spend on two nuclear reactors into new technologies like this? Or the hundreds of billions of dollars were going to waste in Afghanistan?

    • 1 year ago
  • Sam_the_Wizer
    • 0
      Sam_the_Wizer  
    • Image

    • I was looking at the peer-reviewed papers on their website. I don't really understand chemistry too well, but the catalyst is made of Cobalt and Phospate. Cobalt is often used as a blue dye, and Gatorade contains phosphates. I'm gonna try dumping some blue paint in a bottle of Gatorade and leaving it in the sun. I'll let y'all know what happens.

    • 1 year ago
  • idealist
  • thetrimsmith
    • 0
      thetrimsmith  

    • First the Church suppressed technology, now Capitalist! They should realize that there is money to be made in technology that is non-caustic. I want my Seasons back, and my Mother Goose Earth (Old Growth Forest).

    • 1 year ago
  • GodsnLiberals
    • 0
      GodsnLiberals  

    • so what about the side-effects of those trillions of dollars in stimulus package that went somewhere else??

      but nonetheless..i hope this works out

    • 1 year ago
  • Lieueil
    • 0
      Lieueil  

    • This is really cool. I'd love to hear more about this. Harvesting sunlight for straight solar power always sounded kind of tedious to me, but harvesting water is something we got taken care of already. 8D

    • 1 year ago
  • WeAreChangeKy
    • -3
      WeAreChangeKy  

    • I bet we don't get Al Gore on board with this one, either. They won't use this technology because they want your taxes not your inventions. The Kings and Queens will use this technology to make themselves more efficient while they continue to tell you that you pollute too much. So pay them. Pay your taxes and the pollution and global warming go away. Or....start using some of the technology available that would make us greener and wealthier. Oh, we can't do this, didn't you hear yet? Well, you will soon. There's a global water shortage so this won't work. I guess we'll just pay new water taxes too and everything will be okay. Sorry for the rant, nice post, Unimatrix.

    • 1 year ago
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