New energy order arrives: photosynthesis produces Hydrogen from sea water

by Stan Beer

Tuesday, 19 August 2008

Page 2 of 3 Perhaps one of the most tantalising aspects of the new technology is that unlike photovoltaic cells, the photosynthesis replication process being reproduced at Monash requires relatively low levels of sunlight. "Weve found that our devices work in one tenth sunlight. Even under very diffused light conditions inside and so on the devices will still work and we don't even have very effective light capture at the moment," says Professor Spiccia. "The other thing we've actually shown is that we can just use sea water and the device will operate very well. If you can use ocean water directly by just simply filtering it without having to use clean water it's a big advantage." According Professor Spiccia the successful production of Hydrogen in the laboratory using the replicated photosynthetic process is the result of 10 years research. "The work was started about 10 years ago at Princeton and what they showed was that if you irradiated these clusters with light you could actually kick out one molecule of Oxygen. The breakthrough we've come up between the three groups (Monash, Princeton and CSIRO) is to get the cubane to turn over - to release one molecule of Oxygen, then take up water and then release some more Oxygen. "To do that, we used a Nafion polymer membrane which is actually used in fuel cells as a photon conductor. And so we can poke the cubanes into that film and once you shine light on it and apply a bias, the device will work for three days without too much trouble." CONTINUED page 3 << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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