Tata & MIT energy breakthrough: 1.5 bottles of water, including wastewater, can power a small house

[TalkingDog]

http://inhabitat.com/tata-mit-work-on-breakthrough-way-to-generate-power-from-ordinary-water/

Nocera and his team discovered recently that an artificial cobalt and phosphate coated silicon leaf placed into a jar of water generates power. Similar to photosynthesis, this process splits hydrogen from the two oxygen molecules in water to create power from the sun.

One and a half bottles of water, including wastewater, can power a small house, and a swimming pool filled with water refreshed once a day will generate enough energy to run a plant. Although in preliminary testing stages, Nocera and TATA envision that this technology could improve the standard of living for billions of people. One small caveat from us: often places that are short on electricity are also short on water. Being just 45 days old, the TATA/MIT team still has a ways to go to get this incredible technology off the ground.

[plumbob]

1. Wow! Going to keep track of this!

[wtmusic]

2. It's about time someone cracked the first law of thermodynamics.

One and a half bottles of water can power a house?? Awesome!!

100% BS.

[EOTE]

6. Care to explain precisely how this defies the first law?

If you were to convert all of the matter in that glass of water to pure energy, it would be able to power a hell of a lot more than just a house, most likely for a significant time. I fail to see how this contradicts conservation of energy. It might seem far fetched (and maybe it is), but I don't see anything that explicitly violates the laws of thermodynamics.

[hobbit709]

10. What conversion of matter to energy.

Separating the water molecule into its component atoms does not turn it into energy. If you burn the resultant gases to recombine back into water, you will generate some heat from chemical energy but there's not enough to power a house.

[Aerows]

15. He's speaking of...

...anti-matter conversion. We aren't anywhere near there, however this utilizes the sun, not the conversion of matter to energy. There are many energy production methods that are feasible, but the problem has been harnessing them effectively and efficiently for use.

[EOTE]

17. I wasn't suggesting that this water is being directly converted to energy.

What I was saying was that since there is far more energy potential within that glass of water than would be needed to power a house, this does not violate the first law of thermodynamics at all.

[hobbit709]

19. Energy potential at the fusion level, not at the chemical level.

There is a big difference between the two.

[EOTE]

22. So are you suggesting this violates the laws of thermodynamics?

I'd very much like to hear your reasoning on that. Especially considering that we're not talking about a closed system here.

[Aerows]

12. If you could convert all of the matter in that glass...

...to pure energy, you could probably power the world for the next 1000 years. See my post right below yours. The matter in a pencil eraser can blow the moon out of our galaxy if converted to pure energy.

[hobbit709]

16. There is NO conversion of matter to energy.

The scientific illiterate amaze me sometimes.

This is a CHEMICAL process, not an atomic level energy process.

[Aerows]

24. I wasn't arguing that, either

And I'm certainly not going to debate quantum physics as though they are a myth. I realize that these are two different things, and I even said as much.

I realize it was a chemical process, and if you will note in my comments, I pointed out that there are many viable ways of generating electricity and the main hurdle to them has been harnessing them efficiently and effectively. My undergraduate degree was in Chemistry, so feel free to explain to me that I am scientifically illiterate - unless that was not directed at me.

[EOTE]

29. I don't think it's quite that much.

The figure I've heard quoted is that a gram of matter, turned to pure energy, would release a few terajoules of energy. Or that an antimatter bomb using about a gram of antimatter would result in an explosion about 3 times that of Hiroshima.

[TheWraith]

40. Roughly correct. 1 gram of antimatter would produce yield equivalent to a 42 kiloton nuclear bomb.

That's 175,728,000,000,000 joules, or equivalent to about 48.8 gigawatt-hours of energy. Roughly what a nuclear power plant or a good hydro dam produces in a day.

To set the record straight, we would need about 700 pounds of antimatter PER YEAR to supply global energy demand (including fossil fuels). That doesn't sound bad until you know that antimatter production costs about $25 billion dollars per gram.

And yes, the article referenced in the OP is either grotesque failure of science reporting (what's new?) or complete horseshit.

[Thav]

42. Possibly a failure of science

however, they're trying to commercialize this so they're guarding the secret/process behind it. Obviously it's not "cobalt + phosphate + water = INFINITE POWER" there's gotta be more to it.

This does remind me of the "electricity from a potato" reaction, though.

[Poll_Blind]

51. I won't press so hard when erasing anything the next time!

You're right of course and I love whenever people bring this sort of thing up in conversations because I think too many folks don't get how awesome a containment for energy matter really is.

PB

[Aerows]

9. Considering that...

...there is enough matter within a pencil eraser that if converted to anti-matter could power the entire world for the next 500 years, or blow the moon out of our galaxy, I'd not poo-poo this just yet. If it's BS, then we will know soon enough. There are many energy sources where the main hurdle to their use has been adequate capacitance and the ability to harness it for use.

Solar technology has come a lot further in the last 50 years, and many household items use far less power than they used to.

[wtmusic]

23. This has been around for a while.

It's a way to separate water into hydrogen/oxygen that appears to be more efficient than electrolysis. There are no nuclear reactions involved here, so only (relatively weak) chemical bonding energy is available.

Nocera deserves credit - it could be a more efficient way to capture energy from the sun. But the water is not "powering" anything - it's storing energy captured from the sun as gaseous hydrogen/oxygen.

You still have to capture the sunlight. A traditional 1m² solar panel captures 1kWh of energy on an extremely sunny day; a typical home uses about 16kWh/day. So if you had 16 square meters of panels you could, in theory, generate enough energy through conventional methods. The problem is that energy needs to be stored, and storage involves a lot of wasted energy - whether it's in batteries, or as hydrogen.

So I'll retract and say "90% BS". It's being severely misrepresented here.

[Motown_Johnny]

32. it claims to be more efficient than solar panels

and I agree that it is severely misrepresented here, but it still could be significant.

How significant depends on the efficiency of the electrolysis. The real problem here is that you will never get as much energy back out of the fuel than it took to split the water in the first place. I must assume that the claim to be more efficient than solar panels means that it is more efficient than using the electricity generated by solar panels in electrolysis. It can't possibly be as efficient as using the electricity to power something directly.

The ability to produce the hydrogen on site is more efficient than needing to transport/transfer the fuel. I am open minded on this so far but I love the idea of simply splitting water into hydrogen and water and then recombining it for power (and recycling the water to split again).

[wtmusic]

35. If I understand it correctly, there's no electrolysis involved

it uses the chemical/physical properties of the leaf to separate water in a "photodecompositive" process. Then the hydrogen can be used to generate electricity on an as-needed basis with a fuel cell.

Fuel cells have their own set of problems, but it's a step in the right direction.

[Motown_Johnny]

37. .

OK, Technically it is not electrolysis. I guess I shouldn't have called it that. However it is using a form of energy to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen.

To me it is a different road to the same place.



http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/electrol.html

^snip^

Electrolysis of Water

By providing energy from a battery, water (H2O) can be dissociated into the diatomic molecules of hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2).

The electrolysis of one mole of water produces a mole of hydrogen gas and a half-mole of oxygen gas in their normal diatomic forms

[bigmonkey]

57. It actually is electrolysis, as I understand it from his presentation.

Just electrolysis using a catalyst that drops electrical requirements per molecule split. It's a storage method, using electrolysis to store energy from the sun as hydrogen gas to be burned later. The figure of 1 1/2 bottles, as far as I could tell from the presentation, was to represent how many molecules of gas would need to be burned, by using the end product of the burning as the measure. So, if you could split that amount in a day, and burn it back, you'd be all set.

Clearly, one could calculate the amount of gas involved once that amount of water were split, and how much energy it would yield on burning. I'm not competent to actually do that calculation, would it be enough?

[wtmusic]

58. It's different

Electrolysis involves application of electricity energy via electrodes:

"An electrical power source is connected to two electrodes, or two plates (typically made from some inert metal such as platinum or stainless steel) which are placed in the water."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water

Nocera's tech:

"Efforts have focused on understanding the reactions of multielectron, proton-coupled transformations of energy poor substrates. From this platform, the group has successfully used solar light to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Recently, they have realized artificial photosynthesis by the solar splitting of water under benign conditions."

http://www.mit.edu/~chemistry/faculty/nocera.html

Don't want to be one of those geeks who picks nits, but the exciting part about this is the very fact that it doesn't involve the efficiency drain of a translation to electricity and back again.

[bigmonkey]

60. Frankly, you could be right.

The presentation that I saw seemed to avoid discussing the source of energy for the molecule splitting. My impression was that there were photovoltaic cells used to supply electricity, and that this new technology was simply increasing the efficiency of the electrolysis. I'd be happy to learn that the electrical dependence is gone. I'll look at the link you've provided.

[Statistical]

41. Care to recheck your stats?

Pure conversion of matter into energy would produce 9×10^16 J/kg. You can't convert matter into anti-matter. I guess you mean the energy of an anti-matter & matter anihilation.

A pencil eraser is maybe 0.01kg. 0.01kg of anti-matter would anhilate 0.01kg of matter. So that is 1.8x10^15J total energy in 0.02kg (0.01kg anti-matter + + 0.01kg matter).

Granted that is a lot of energy but to put it into perspective.
Global energy consumption is 4.8x10^18 J so 1 pencil eraser of anti-matter could (with perfect energy conversion) power the world for about 3 hours not 500 years.

Alternatively as a weapon (for destroying the moon) it would be 430kT (430 kiloton) yield. Roughly equivalent to modern nuclear weapons and far less powerful than the most powerful nuclear detonation ever (50,000 kt). Hardly enough to "blow the moon out of our galaxy".

Other comparisons:
Chemical Energy (TNT): 4.2 x 10^6 J/kg (roughly 1 trillionth the energy density)
Fission: 8.0 x 10^13 J/kg (roughly 1/60,00th the energy density)
Fussion: 6.3 x 10^16 K/kg (roughly 1/80th the energy density)

Of course given there is no energy free source of antimatter (at least not one we found) at best antimatter would be a energy storage mechanism not a fuel).

[Aerows]

46. You are correct...

...I missed a few decimal places.

In any case, I regret having ever mentioned anything to do with atomic energy in this, because clearly that has nothing to do with this post (a fact which I also mentioned in the first posting to it).

I do look forward to seeing if this iteration of the technology ends up being more practical and efficient.

[Statistical]

47. No problem.

Only reason I brought it up is some people think (likely due to movies) that anti-matter if some insanely off the charts powerful energy source.

The reality is it is roughly 80x as powerful as fusion something mankind has already created (but not yet been able to control). Granted 80x is a nice multiplier. I wouldn't mind it. :)

[Aerows]

54. Me neither :)

And, for the record, I'm not a Wikipedia engineer. My undergraduate degree was in Chemistry, though I am now an IT engineer. :)

I wouldn't mind it, either. I am greatly looking forward to more *efficient* power usage, as the need to generate electricity is sharply curbed by the need to use as much of it :).

Hopefully we are slowly getting there.

[krispos42]

3. Through funds from the stimulus package?

:rofl:

The ones the Republicans voted against?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[HughBeaumont]

4. AMMO!

Will the Democrats use that Ammo? Remains to be seen . . .

[rurallib]

5. Exxon, BP, Conoco, Shell, Chevron will be buying up water

soon.
I suspect this will also have an application to autos. Could be exciting.

[Schema Thing]

8. no they won't.

[hobbit709]

7. What is artificial cobalt?

And just how big are these bottles?

[Motown_Johnny]

18. I think it is an artificial leaf of cobalt and........

[Terry in Austin]

11. Keep in mind, it's not the water

Strictly speaking, it's not the water that produces the power. It's the sun. There are many ways of converting solar energy to electricity, some of them more efficient than others.

This method is just another one that will have to stand in line to be evaluated on the same basis as all the rest.

[RandomKoolzip]

13. What's the catch?

There has to be a reason why this won't work - adapting the technology to existing infrastructure, etc. Plus, I can't believe nobody stumbled on this before - no one discovered that phosphate and cobalt-coated silicon in water generates power before? It just seems too good to be true.

Someone who knows more about science than me and is skeptical, please explain the downside to this.

[Orsino]

36. The catch is that they're not generating power from water.

This is just electrolysis of water, pumping energy in to split it into hydrogen and oxygen. In other words, this is a piece of a solar energy storage system.

It's not free energy. Anything revolutionary about it is going to hinge on efficiency and manufacturing costs.

The video here makes that a bit clearer: http://www.fastcompany.com/1742141/tata-teams-up-with-mit-researchers-to-create-power-from-water-bring-power-to-billions-of-peo

[Yo_Mama]

39. Yes, that's right

A bunch of researchers are looking at things like this.

The question is - how much energy do you put in to get out how much hydrogen?

The net output depends on the efficiency of the process (how much energy is lost to change the energy from one form to another). Hydrogen fuel cells have been around for a while.

[Motown_Johnny]

14. I think some of this is misleading. In the video the guy says "fuel" not "power"

and in the OP the quote has this process creating "power".


This seems to me to be a more efficient way of using electrolysis to split water so the hydrogen can be used in a fuel cell. If this is true then the water is not the issue because it could be recycled. Split through electrolysis and gathered again after being run through a fuel cell.


Somewhat less ground breaking than the OP implies but if it is efficient enough it could be significant.



Please watch the video and see if you gather the same meaning from it as I did.

[Schema Thing]

20. bullshit alert:

when you read something as fatuous as this: 'One small caveat from us: often places that are short on electricity are also short on water", (put in as if to look reasonable and hesitant)....



you know you are dealing with a moron. The foul penman just said "one and a half bottles of water, including wastewater, can power a small house".

That's a game-changer with ZERO downsides. There is no worry that we can't get 1.5 bottles of water to every human on the planet.

So you can't have it both ways and anyone who would write the above contradictory items is too stupid to be writing about science or technology.

[Motown_Johnny]

30. it does look like whoever wrote the article doesn't understand the technology

did you watch the video?

To me this looks like a better way to get hydrogen for fuel cells and nothing more. The problem won't be the water because water can be gathered from a fuel cell after the hydrogen is run through it.


This process does not create power, it creates fuel.

[Snoutport]

48. ah, c'mon...it made us all feel so hopeful! nt

[Zorra]

31. Nice catch. Whoever wrote that was a very poor marketer/propagandist.

It could be true that the fledgling technology exists but the person writing about it either wasn't knowledgable and/or had ulterior motives, ie, attracting naive investors.

One thing about DU, analyzing posts can teach us a lot about language, how language is used, and the genuine intent of the person writing.
:thumbsup:

[Ratty]

55. How big is the bottle? How long will it power a house for?

Does the bottle have to be as big as an oil tanker? Will one and a half bottles power a house for a nanosecond? I assume it must be a million years. And million years must be in italics too: "One and a half bottles the size of a pin will power a house for a million years!" That's a story I can really get behind.

[dkofos]

21. If it cannot be scaled up to industrial scale for sale by the power companies,

it will most likely be shelved.

[librechik]

34. and don't forget monthly leasing aas well as planned obsolescence

gotta keep those billionaire's families rich into the next millennium or it's going nowhere, promise.
:(

[Dappleganger]

25. PLEASE come and turn our swimming pool into a power plant!!!

Seriously, we would happily give that up in order to supply our own power!!

[Gold Metal Flake]

26. Start saving your urine, folks!

[wtmusic]

27. Urine explodes.

Can't use urine. Don't even try! :D

[BR_Parkway]

44. I wondered about that when they said wastewater

[Tsiyu]

28. Here's to all those tinkering

I hope we see more and more small and large scale systems being developed to generate electricity.

(Before I build my little off-the-grid house, preferably.) :toast:

[immoderate]

33. This looks good. I don't see any flaws, like the "Air Car"

The energy is there in abundance. It's just a matter of harvesting it. (You can't store much energy by compressing air. Might as well wind up a spring.)

Atomic hydrogen is difficult to handle and store. And if its not separated from the oxygen, it's explosive. But it's perfect, if separated, to power a fuel cell.

Two decades ago, I did a Fermi type calculation, and concluded that the required area of solar collector to meet the power needs of the US was the same as all the rooftops. That was before the latest, more efficient panels were developed.

The problem with solar is storage. This shows a promise of solving that.

I am sure that there is a workable solution to powering civilization from the sun.

--imm

[Snoutport]

38. great news... thank for sharing nt

[toddwv]

43. Sounds great but...

I'll believe it when it's actually in production.

[Statistical]

45. There isn't that much hydrogen in water....

so either the author (of the article not the OP) mixed up a lot of facts due to ignorance or it is complete BS.

To get an upper limit lets assume this device perfectly (no energy loss) breaks down all the water in the "bottle" into hydrogen and oxygen. Lets assume by bottle the authors means a gallon. So 1.5 gallons of water. 1.5 gallons of water is roughly 5.6kg (12.5 pounds).

Water breaks down like this:
2H2O ---> 2H2 + O2

Now it might look like half of the weight of water is Hydrogen but you need to compensate for the different weights of each atom. I will skip showing the boring molecular math. 5.6kg of water produces 5.0kg of oxygen and 0.6kg of hydrogen.

The specific energy of hydrogen (pure chemical conversion with no loss of efficiency) is roughly 39kWh, so 0.6kg would produce 24 kWh worth of energy.

The most efficient commercial fuel cells on the planet are roughly 30% so you would get 7.2kWh. Not enough to run an average American household for a single day.


Remember this is theoretical max. No inefficiency, no outside energy, catalyst, or material requirement, nothing every wears out, etc. It also doesn't account for how much energy is necessary to make this device, how long does the catalyst last, how much does replacement catalyst cost, etc.

[n2doc]

52. And nothing is said about the light to H conversion efficiency

I suspect it is much poorer than even a basic photoelectric cell. If one wants electricity, it is better to just produce that rather than producing some sort of intermediate. If one wants a transportable energy source, for long ranges, H would be better but the storage tech isn't there by a long shot.

[muriel_volestrangler]

56. It doesn't have to run it for a day, just overnight

Remember, this is the way of storing the energy from solar cells. The solar cells would run the house during the day - if you have enough of the type that can generate some power in cloudy conditions. This is an alternative to batteries - which the professor doesn't think will meet our needs.

Of course, the amount of water needed is pretty irrelevant, since water is common - the storage method for the hydrogen, and its size, is more interesting.

[eppur_se_muova]

49. Uh, water does not provide the power. Sunlight provides the power.

How ignorant does a journo have to be to focus on the small amount of water involved? The limiting factor here is available light. The water can even be recycled in a closed loop, if that seems necessary for some reason (like space habitat).

[WatsonT]

50. Pretty cool, but

we've heard lots of these claims: my biofuel will produce gas a half the price that the oil companies do! Or these windmills will be 10x as efficient as previous ones. Or this car will get 60+ mpg.

They often aren't nearly as exciting in the real world when applied.

So I would say give it more time before getting too enthusiastic here.

[Poll_Blind]

53. Pfft! I'm going to use Brawndo: It's got electrolytes which my generator craves.

PB

[jmowreader]

59. I would really like to see a block diagram of this

Because we can't see what the hell this guy is up to, since he hasn't published anything but a picture of a jar with an O2 and an H2 collector in it, I am going to assume this "silicon leaf" is a hunk of glass with cobalt coated to one side and phosphate on the other. It's connected to a PV cell on the roof, and there's something to store the hydrogen for later presentation to a regular fuel cell.

We also don't know what size the bottles are--but if they're 20-litre bottles and he is talking about powering a house in rural India (where Tata is) rather than one in the US...well, maybe.