Nanotrees Harvest the Sun’s Energy to Turn Water into Hydrogen Fuel

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressreleases/nanotrees_harvest_the_suns_energy_to_turn_water_into_hydrogen_fuel/

[font face=Times, Times New Roman, Serif][font size=5]Nanotrees Harvest the Sun’s Energy to Turn Water into Hydrogen Fuel[/font]

Electronic microscopic image of a nanoforest, or "3D branched nanowire array." Green tint added for contrast. Image Credit: Wang Research Group, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

[font size=3]University of California, San Diego electrical engineers are building a forest of tiny nanowire trees in order to cleanly capture solar energy without using fossil fuels and harvest it for hydrogen fuel generation. Reporting in the journal Nanoscale, the team said nanowires, which are made from abundant natural materials like silicon and zinc oxide, also offer a cheap way to deliver hydrogen fuel on a mass scale.

“This is a clean way to generate clean fuel,” said Deli Wang, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

The trees’ vertical structure and branches are keys to capturing the maximum amount of solar energy, according to Wang. That’s because the vertical structure of trees grabs and adsorbs light while flat surfaces simply reflect it, Wang said, adding that it is also similar to retinal photoreceptor cells in the human eye. In images of Earth from space, light reflects off of flat surfaces such as the ocean or deserts, while forests appear darker.

Wang’s team has mimicked this structure in their “3D branched nanowire array” which uses a process called photoelectrochemical water-splitting to produce hydrogen gas. Water splitting refers to the process of separating water into oxygen and hydrogen in order to extract hydrogen gas to be used as fuel. This process uses clean energy with no green-house gas byproduct. By comparison, the current conventional way of producing hydrogen relies on electricity from fossil fuels

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[saras]

1. The next step - get something to add CO2 and make hydrocarbons

Then we can have all the SUVs we want.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Yes, that’s sort of the next step

They didn’t mention the SUV’s however…

[saras]

3. Unless the next step is ethanol, in which case they may get distracted and forget the NEXT step...

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. In the long run…

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In the long run, what Wang’s team is aiming for is even bigger: artificial photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, as plants absorb sunlight they also collect carbon dioxide (CO2) and water from the atmosphere to create carbohydrates to fuel their own growth. Wang’s team hopes to mimic this process to also capture CO2 from the atmosphere, reducing carbon emissions, and convert it into hydrocarbon fuel.

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[xtraxritical]

5. Hydrogen has considerably more "octane" than any hydrocarbon fuel.

Burning the hydrogen directly gives way more "bang for the buck" than converting it to hydrocarbon and the end result after burning is pure H2O, water. I hope these researchers are getting federal R&D grant money (yes, just like Solyndra).