Monday, September 5, 2016
"renewables – Made in Germany" (english)
2014/12/22 に公開
The film of the "renewables –Made in Germany" initiative of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy shows the various ways of generating renewable energy and the current related technologies, the comprehensive range of services and the collective expertise of German companies. The main focus is on the transferability of German technologies and the specific ways of applying them. If you are interested in watching the Spanish, French or Arabic version please switch to the correspondent film.
MIT、「人工葉っぱ」の開発に成功。水と太陽光から水素と酸素を直接生成
MIT、「人工葉っぱ」の開発に成功。水と太陽光から水素と酸素を直接生成
http://sustainablejapan.net/?p=592
2011年9月30日
マサチューセッツ工科大学（MIT）の研究チームが、水と太陽光から水素と酸素の気泡を生成できる「人工葉っぱ」と呼ぶべきデバイスを開発しました。外部からの電力供給なしに太陽光エネルギーだけで水素燃料を作り出せるクリーンなエネルギー供給技術として注目されます。
MITが開発した「人工葉っぱ」デバイス。水と太陽光から、貯蔵可能な水素エネルギーを直接生成できる (Photo: Dominick Reuter)
この人工葉っぱは、シリコン太陽電池セルの両面にそれぞれ異なる種類の触媒を貼り合わせたデバイスです。このデバイスを水の入った容器に入れ、太陽光を当てると、片面から酸素、もう一方の面から水素の気泡が発生するといいます。容器の中に仕切りを作れば、酸素と水素を分離して捕集・貯蔵することも可能であり、こうして作った酸素と水素を後から燃料電池に補給することで水と電気エネルギーを取り出すこともできます。
研究リーダーの Daniel Nocera准教授によれば、このデバイスは、地球上に豊富に存在し安価に手に入るシリコン、ニッケル、コバルトを材料としており、普通の水があれば動作することが特徴。水の電気分解に太陽光を利用する試みはこれまでにもありましたが、それらは腐食性溶液やプラチナなどの高価な希少資源を必要とするものだったといいます。
人工葉っぱは、一枚の薄いシリコン半導体のシートから出来ています。シリコン半導体は太陽電池の材料として最も多く使われているもので、太陽光エネルギーをシート内部で電気の流れに変換します。シリコンに貼りつけられたコバルト触媒の層からは、酸素が発生。このコバルト触媒は、2008年にNocera氏のチームが発見したものです。そして、反対面にコーティングされているのは、ニッケル－モリブデン－亜鉛の合金で、ここから水分子に由来する水素が発生します。この水素発生触媒の開発に成功したことで、人工葉っぱデバイスが完成したのです。
The 'Artificial Leaf'
このデバイスは配線もなく、軽量で、発生した気体を捕集・貯蔵するための装置以外には付帯設備も必要ないという非常にポータブルなものです。「デバイスをコップの水の中に落とすだけで、水の電気分解が始まるんです」とNocera氏。
現在、Nocera氏は、人工葉っぱをさらに一歩進めた開発も構想しています。それは、人工葉っぱと同じ材料で微粒子を作り、太陽光があたると水の電気分解が起こるようにするというもので、葉っぱというよりは光合成藻類に近い技術だといいます。微粒子にするのは、太陽光と水に接触する表面積が大きくなるため、エネルギー効率をより向上できるという利点があるからです（ただし、この場合、酸素と水素の気泡を分離捕集するシステムはより複雑化する）。
このデバイスの商用生産の準備は、まだ整っていません。気体の捕集・貯蔵・利用技術が開発途上だからです。究極の目標として、Nocera氏が描いている未来像は、この原理を用いた太陽エネルギー捕集システムが各家庭に備わっている世界です。そこでは、屋根に設置したパネルで水素と酸素を生成し、それをタンクで貯蔵して、必要なときに燃料電池に送り込んで電気を得ることができるようになります。このようなシステムは、現在も電気の安定供給が確保されていない多くの地域でも普及するような、シンプルで安価なものにできるはず、とNocera氏は考えています。
なお、人工葉っぱが太陽光から水素を生成する効率は、ワイヤを使わないタイプで2.5％、太陽電池セルに触媒を直接貼り付けるかわりにワイヤでつないだタイプでは4.7％とのこと（今日商用化されている代表的な太陽電池の変換効率は10％超）。研究チームがいま取り組んでいる問題の一つは、長期的観点から見た場合、どちらのタイプのほうがより効率的でコスト優位性があるかということだといいます。
また、その他の研究課題としては、シリコン以外の太陽電池材料を探すということがあります。例えば、シリコンよりもさらに安価に製造できる酸化鉄などが考えられるといいます。
（発表資料）http://bit.ly/o8Lffs
MIT NEWS
http://news.mit.edu/2011/artificial-leaf-0930
‘Artificial leaf’ makes fuel from sunlight
Solar cell bonded to recently developed catalyst can harness the sun, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.
David L. Chandler, MIT News Office
September 30, 2011
Researchers led by MIT professor Daniel Nocera have produced something they’re calling an “artificial leaf”: Like living leaves, the device can turn the energy of sunlight directly into a chemical fuel that can be stored and used later as an energy source.
The artificial leaf — a silicon solar cell with different catalytic materials bonded onto its two sides — needs no external wires or control circuits to operate. Simply placed in a container of water and exposed to sunlight, it quickly begins to generate streams of bubbles: oxygen bubbles from one side and hydrogen bubbles from the other. If placed in a container that has a barrier to separate the two sides, the two streams of bubbles can be collected and stored, and used later to deliver power: for example, by feeding them into a fuel cell that combines them once again into water while delivering an electric current.
The creation of the device is described in a paper published Sept. 30 in the journal Science. Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and professor of chemistry at MIT, is the senior author; the paper was co-authored by his former student Steven Reece PhD ’07 (who now works at Sun Catalytix, a company started by Nocera to commercialize his solar-energy inventions), along with five other researchers from Sun Catalytix and MIT.
The device, Nocera explains, is made entirely of earth-abundant, inexpensive materials — mostly silicon, cobalt and nickel — and works in ordinary water. Other attempts to produce devices that could use sunlight to split water have relied on corrosive solutions or on relatively rare and expensive materials such as platinum.
The artificial leaf is a thin sheet of semiconducting silicon — the material most solar cells are made of — which turns the energy of sunlight into a flow of wireless electricity within the sheet. Bound onto the silicon is a layer of a cobalt-based catalyst, which releases oxygen, a material whose potential for generating fuel from sunlight was discovered by Nocera and his co-authors in 2008. The other side of the silicon sheet is coated with a layer of a nickel-molybdenum-zinc alloy, which releases hydrogen from the water molecules.
The 'Artificial Leaf'
An 'artificial leaf' made by Daniel Nocera and his team, using a silicon solar cell with novel catalyst materials bonded to its two sides, is shown in a container of water with light (simulating sunlight) shining on it. The light generates a flow of electricity that causes the water molecules, with the help of the catalysts, to split into oxygen and hydrogen, which bubble up from the two surfaces.Video courtesy of the Nocera Lab/Sun Catalytix
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shocking Trick To Desalinate Seawater
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/environment/shocking-trick-to-desalinate-water
By Prachi Patel
Getting clean water for drinking and agriculture to a burgeoning population is one of the most pressing challenges of this century. A natural place to turn to is the world’s oceans, but desalinating seawater has so far proven to be costly and energy-intensive.
Engineers at MIT have come up with a new desalination system that uses a shockwave to get the salt out of seawater. It could be a practical and energy-efficient method for desalination; water purification in remote locations and emergencies; and for cleaning brackish wastewater generated from hydraulic fracturing, the researchers say.
The most common desalination method involves boiling seawater, which takes a lot of energy. A slightly less energy-intensive method is reverse osmosis, in which seawater is pushed through a thick membrane that blocks sodium and chloride ions and lets fresh water through. But reverse osmosis is limited by the rate at which water molecules pass through the membrane. Plus, you still need a substantial amount of energy to force water through the membrane.
So Martin Bazant, a professor of chemical engineering and mathematics at MIT have turned to a process called shock electrodialysis that doesn’t require membranes and uses very little energy.
In the process, water flows through a charged porous material made of tiny glass particles that are sintered together. When a small electric current is applied across the porous glass, the salt ions accumulate on one side of the flow, creating an ion-rich side and an ion-deficient side. When the current is increased to a certain point, the charged surfaces of the porous media generate a shockwave that sharply divides the flowing water into two streams, one with fresh water and the other salty. The streams are simply physically separated at the center of the flow.
The generation of a shockwave in salt water was discovered a few years ago by researchers at Stanford University. But Bazant and his team have for the first time used it in a prototype electrodialysis system, which they reported on November 3 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Their prototype system can remove over 99% of various salts from solutions and recover up to 79% of the water. It can also remove contaminants like dirt and bacteria.
The system should be practical to scale up since it uses a simple setup and cheap materials. The team is now working on a larger prototype system.
In a MIT press release, Maarten Biesheuvel, a principal scientist at the Netherlands Water Technology Institute who was not involved in this research, said that the new work
“opens up a whole range of new possibilities for water desalination, both for seawater and brackish water resources, such as groundwater. It will be interesting to see whether the upscaling of this technology, from a single cell to a stack of thousands of cells, can be achieved without undue problems.”
“I think there’s going to be real opportunities for this idea,” Nocera says. “You can’t get more portable — you don’t need wires, it’s lightweight,” and it doesn’t require much in the way of additional equipment, other than a way of catching and storing the gases that bubble off. “You just drop it in a glass of water, and it starts splitting it,” he says.
Now that the “leaf” has been demonstrated, Nocera suggests one possible further development: tiny particles made of these materials that can split water molecules when placed in sunlight — making them more like photosynthetic algae than leaves. The advantage of that, he says, is that the small particles would have much more surface area exposed to sunlight and the water, allowing them to harness the sun’s energy more efficiently. (On the other hand, engineering a system to separate and collect the two gases would be more complicated in such a setup.)
The new device is not yet ready for commercial production, since systems to collect, store and use the gases remain to be developed. “It’s a step,” Nocera says. “It’s heading in the right direction.”
Ultimately, he sees a future in which individual homes could be equipped with solar-collection systems based on this principle: Panels on the roof could use sunlight to produce hydrogen and oxygen that would be stored in tanks, and then fed to a fuel cell whenever electricity is needed. Such systems, Nocera hopes, could be made simple and inexpensive enough so that they could be widely adopted throughout the world, including many areas that do not presently have access to reliable sources of electricity.
Professor James Barber, a biochemist from Imperial College London who was not involved in this research, says Nocera’s 2008 finding of the cobalt-based catalyst was a “major discovery,” and these latest findings “are equally as important, since now the water-splitting reaction is powered entirely by visible light using tightly coupled systems comparable with that used in natural photosynthesis. This is a major achievement, which is one more step toward developing cheap and robust technology to harvest solar energy as chemical fuel.”
Barber cautions that “there will be much work required to optimize the system, particularly in relation to the basic problem of efficiently using protons generated from the water-splitting reaction for hydrogen production.” But, he says, “there is no doubt that their achievement is a major breakthrough which will have a significant impact on the work of others dedicated to constructing light-driven catalytic systems to produce hydrogen and other solar fuels from water. This technology will advance side by side with new initiatives to improve and lower the cost of photovoltaics.”
Nocera’s ongoing research with the artificial leaf is directed toward “driving costs lower and lower,” he says, and looking at ways of improving the system’s efficiency. At present, the leaf can redirect about 2.5 percent of the energy of sunlight into hydrogen production in its wireless form; a variation using wires to connect the catalysts to the solar cell rather than bonding them together has attained 4.7 percent efficiency. (Typical commercial solar cells today have efficiencies of more than 10 percent). One question Nocera and his colleagues will be addressing is which of these configurations will be more efficient and cost-effective in the long run.
Another line of research is to explore the use of photovoltaic (solar cell) materials other than silicon — such as iron oxide, which might be even cheaper to produce. “It’s all about providing options for how you go about this,” Nocera says.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reference article :
https://youtu.be/J556uXwrjII
The Artificial Leaf - Renewable Energy - Horizons.
2013/06/17 に公開
Adam Shaw travels to Boston to meet Harvard professor Daniel Nocera who has created a device that has the ability to replicate photosynthesis. More Horizons here http://www.bbc.com/horizonsbusiness/ (outside UK only)
Subscribe to the BBC Worldwide channel: http://bit.ly/yqBWhy
BBC Worldwide Channel: http://www.youtube.com/BBCWorldwide
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://sustainablejapan.net/?p=592
2011年9月30日
マサチューセッツ工科大学（MIT）の研究チームが、水と太陽光から水素と酸素の気泡を生成できる「人工葉っぱ」と呼ぶべきデバイスを開発しました。外部からの電力供給なしに太陽光エネルギーだけで水素燃料を作り出せるクリーンなエネルギー供給技術として注目されます。
MITが開発した「人工葉っぱ」デバイス。水と太陽光から、貯蔵可能な水素エネルギーを直接生成できる (Photo: Dominick Reuter)
この人工葉っぱは、シリコン太陽電池セルの両面にそれぞれ異なる種類の触媒を貼り合わせたデバイスです。このデバイスを水の入った容器に入れ、太陽光を当てると、片面から酸素、もう一方の面から水素の気泡が発生するといいます。容器の中に仕切りを作れば、酸素と水素を分離して捕集・貯蔵することも可能であり、こうして作った酸素と水素を後から燃料電池に補給することで水と電気エネルギーを取り出すこともできます。
研究リーダーの Daniel Nocera准教授によれば、このデバイスは、地球上に豊富に存在し安価に手に入るシリコン、ニッケル、コバルトを材料としており、普通の水があれば動作することが特徴。水の電気分解に太陽光を利用する試みはこれまでにもありましたが、それらは腐食性溶液やプラチナなどの高価な希少資源を必要とするものだったといいます。
人工葉っぱは、一枚の薄いシリコン半導体のシートから出来ています。シリコン半導体は太陽電池の材料として最も多く使われているもので、太陽光エネルギーをシート内部で電気の流れに変換します。シリコンに貼りつけられたコバルト触媒の層からは、酸素が発生。このコバルト触媒は、2008年にNocera氏のチームが発見したものです。そして、反対面にコーティングされているのは、ニッケル－モリブデン－亜鉛の合金で、ここから水分子に由来する水素が発生します。この水素発生触媒の開発に成功したことで、人工葉っぱデバイスが完成したのです。
The 'Artificial Leaf'
2011/09/27 にアップロード
An "artificial leaf" made by Daniel Nocera and his team, using a silicon solar cell with novel catalyst materials bonded to its two sides, is shown in a container of water with light (simulating sunlight) shining on it. The light generates a flow of electricity that causes the water molecules, with the help of the catalysts, to split into oxygen and hydrogen, which bubble up from the two surfaces.
Video and edit provided by: John McCarthy, Track Seventeen Films
Read more about this work at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/ar...
Video and edit provided by: John McCarthy, Track Seventeen Films
Read more about this work at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/ar...
このデバイスは配線もなく、軽量で、発生した気体を捕集・貯蔵するための装置以外には付帯設備も必要ないという非常にポータブルなものです。「デバイスをコップの水の中に落とすだけで、水の電気分解が始まるんです」とNocera氏。
現在、Nocera氏は、人工葉っぱをさらに一歩進めた開発も構想しています。それは、人工葉っぱと同じ材料で微粒子を作り、太陽光があたると水の電気分解が起こるようにするというもので、葉っぱというよりは光合成藻類に近い技術だといいます。微粒子にするのは、太陽光と水に接触する表面積が大きくなるため、エネルギー効率をより向上できるという利点があるからです（ただし、この場合、酸素と水素の気泡を分離捕集するシステムはより複雑化する）。
このデバイスの商用生産の準備は、まだ整っていません。気体の捕集・貯蔵・利用技術が開発途上だからです。究極の目標として、Nocera氏が描いている未来像は、この原理を用いた太陽エネルギー捕集システムが各家庭に備わっている世界です。そこでは、屋根に設置したパネルで水素と酸素を生成し、それをタンクで貯蔵して、必要なときに燃料電池に送り込んで電気を得ることができるようになります。このようなシステムは、現在も電気の安定供給が確保されていない多くの地域でも普及するような、シンプルで安価なものにできるはず、とNocera氏は考えています。
なお、人工葉っぱが太陽光から水素を生成する効率は、ワイヤを使わないタイプで2.5％、太陽電池セルに触媒を直接貼り付けるかわりにワイヤでつないだタイプでは4.7％とのこと（今日商用化されている代表的な太陽電池の変換効率は10％超）。研究チームがいま取り組んでいる問題の一つは、長期的観点から見た場合、どちらのタイプのほうがより効率的でコスト優位性があるかということだといいます。
また、その他の研究課題としては、シリコン以外の太陽電池材料を探すということがあります。例えば、シリコンよりもさらに安価に製造できる酸化鉄などが考えられるといいます。
（発表資料）http://bit.ly/o8Lffs
MIT NEWS
http://news.mit.edu/2011/artificial-leaf-0930
‘Artificial leaf’ makes fuel from sunlight
Solar cell bonded to recently developed catalyst can harness the sun, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.
David L. Chandler, MIT News Office
September 30, 2011
Researchers led by MIT professor Daniel Nocera have produced something they’re calling an “artificial leaf”: Like living leaves, the device can turn the energy of sunlight directly into a chemical fuel that can be stored and used later as an energy source.
The artificial leaf — a silicon solar cell with different catalytic materials bonded onto its two sides — needs no external wires or control circuits to operate. Simply placed in a container of water and exposed to sunlight, it quickly begins to generate streams of bubbles: oxygen bubbles from one side and hydrogen bubbles from the other. If placed in a container that has a barrier to separate the two sides, the two streams of bubbles can be collected and stored, and used later to deliver power: for example, by feeding them into a fuel cell that combines them once again into water while delivering an electric current.
The creation of the device is described in a paper published Sept. 30 in the journal Science. Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and professor of chemistry at MIT, is the senior author; the paper was co-authored by his former student Steven Reece PhD ’07 (who now works at Sun Catalytix, a company started by Nocera to commercialize his solar-energy inventions), along with five other researchers from Sun Catalytix and MIT.
The device, Nocera explains, is made entirely of earth-abundant, inexpensive materials — mostly silicon, cobalt and nickel — and works in ordinary water. Other attempts to produce devices that could use sunlight to split water have relied on corrosive solutions or on relatively rare and expensive materials such as platinum.
The artificial leaf is a thin sheet of semiconducting silicon — the material most solar cells are made of — which turns the energy of sunlight into a flow of wireless electricity within the sheet. Bound onto the silicon is a layer of a cobalt-based catalyst, which releases oxygen, a material whose potential for generating fuel from sunlight was discovered by Nocera and his co-authors in 2008. The other side of the silicon sheet is coated with a layer of a nickel-molybdenum-zinc alloy, which releases hydrogen from the water molecules.
The 'Artificial Leaf'
An 'artificial leaf' made by Daniel Nocera and his team, using a silicon solar cell with novel catalyst materials bonded to its two sides, is shown in a container of water with light (simulating sunlight) shining on it. The light generates a flow of electricity that causes the water molecules, with the help of the catalysts, to split into oxygen and hydrogen, which bubble up from the two surfaces.Video courtesy of the Nocera Lab/Sun Catalytix
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shocking Trick To Desalinate Seawater
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/environment/shocking-trick-to-desalinate-water
By Prachi Patel
Posted
Illustration: MITtleman Lab/Brown University
Getting clean water for drinking and agriculture to a burgeoning population is one of the most pressing challenges of this century. A natural place to turn to is the world’s oceans, but desalinating seawater has so far proven to be costly and energy-intensive.
Engineers at MIT have come up with a new desalination system that uses a shockwave to get the salt out of seawater. It could be a practical and energy-efficient method for desalination; water purification in remote locations and emergencies; and for cleaning brackish wastewater generated from hydraulic fracturing, the researchers say.
The most common desalination method involves boiling seawater, which takes a lot of energy. A slightly less energy-intensive method is reverse osmosis, in which seawater is pushed through a thick membrane that blocks sodium and chloride ions and lets fresh water through. But reverse osmosis is limited by the rate at which water molecules pass through the membrane. Plus, you still need a substantial amount of energy to force water through the membrane.
So Martin Bazant, a professor of chemical engineering and mathematics at MIT have turned to a process called shock electrodialysis that doesn’t require membranes and uses very little energy.
In the process, water flows through a charged porous material made of tiny glass particles that are sintered together. When a small electric current is applied across the porous glass, the salt ions accumulate on one side of the flow, creating an ion-rich side and an ion-deficient side. When the current is increased to a certain point, the charged surfaces of the porous media generate a shockwave that sharply divides the flowing water into two streams, one with fresh water and the other salty. The streams are simply physically separated at the center of the flow.
The generation of a shockwave in salt water was discovered a few years ago by researchers at Stanford University. But Bazant and his team have for the first time used it in a prototype electrodialysis system, which they reported on November 3 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Their prototype system can remove over 99% of various salts from solutions and recover up to 79% of the water. It can also remove contaminants like dirt and bacteria.
The system should be practical to scale up since it uses a simple setup and cheap materials. The team is now working on a larger prototype system.
In a MIT press release, Maarten Biesheuvel, a principal scientist at the Netherlands Water Technology Institute who was not involved in this research, said that the new work
“opens up a whole range of new possibilities for water desalination, both for seawater and brackish water resources, such as groundwater. It will be interesting to see whether the upscaling of this technology, from a single cell to a stack of thousands of cells, can be achieved without undue problems.”
“I think there’s going to be real opportunities for this idea,” Nocera says. “You can’t get more portable — you don’t need wires, it’s lightweight,” and it doesn’t require much in the way of additional equipment, other than a way of catching and storing the gases that bubble off. “You just drop it in a glass of water, and it starts splitting it,” he says.
Now that the “leaf” has been demonstrated, Nocera suggests one possible further development: tiny particles made of these materials that can split water molecules when placed in sunlight — making them more like photosynthetic algae than leaves. The advantage of that, he says, is that the small particles would have much more surface area exposed to sunlight and the water, allowing them to harness the sun’s energy more efficiently. (On the other hand, engineering a system to separate and collect the two gases would be more complicated in such a setup.)
The new device is not yet ready for commercial production, since systems to collect, store and use the gases remain to be developed. “It’s a step,” Nocera says. “It’s heading in the right direction.”
Ultimately, he sees a future in which individual homes could be equipped with solar-collection systems based on this principle: Panels on the roof could use sunlight to produce hydrogen and oxygen that would be stored in tanks, and then fed to a fuel cell whenever electricity is needed. Such systems, Nocera hopes, could be made simple and inexpensive enough so that they could be widely adopted throughout the world, including many areas that do not presently have access to reliable sources of electricity.
Professor James Barber, a biochemist from Imperial College London who was not involved in this research, says Nocera’s 2008 finding of the cobalt-based catalyst was a “major discovery,” and these latest findings “are equally as important, since now the water-splitting reaction is powered entirely by visible light using tightly coupled systems comparable with that used in natural photosynthesis. This is a major achievement, which is one more step toward developing cheap and robust technology to harvest solar energy as chemical fuel.”
Barber cautions that “there will be much work required to optimize the system, particularly in relation to the basic problem of efficiently using protons generated from the water-splitting reaction for hydrogen production.” But, he says, “there is no doubt that their achievement is a major breakthrough which will have a significant impact on the work of others dedicated to constructing light-driven catalytic systems to produce hydrogen and other solar fuels from water. This technology will advance side by side with new initiatives to improve and lower the cost of photovoltaics.”
Nocera’s ongoing research with the artificial leaf is directed toward “driving costs lower and lower,” he says, and looking at ways of improving the system’s efficiency. At present, the leaf can redirect about 2.5 percent of the energy of sunlight into hydrogen production in its wireless form; a variation using wires to connect the catalysts to the solar cell rather than bonding them together has attained 4.7 percent efficiency. (Typical commercial solar cells today have efficiencies of more than 10 percent). One question Nocera and his colleagues will be addressing is which of these configurations will be more efficient and cost-effective in the long run.
Another line of research is to explore the use of photovoltaic (solar cell) materials other than silicon — such as iron oxide, which might be even cheaper to produce. “It’s all about providing options for how you go about this,” Nocera says.
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Reference article :
The Artificial Leaf - Renewable Energy - Horizons.
2013/06/17 に公開
Adam Shaw travels to Boston to meet Harvard professor Daniel Nocera who has created a device that has the ability to replicate photosynthesis. More Horizons here http://www.bbc.com/horizonsbusiness/ (outside UK only)
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