Stan Beer
Tuesday, 19 August 2008 10:03
Science -
Energy
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."
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