Do as the plants do
Researchers have found a way to maximally harvest the energy of the sun. The secret? Do as the plants do and photosynthesize.
The technique simply uses energy from a solar panel to split water - which creates and stores a huge amount of energy. A cobalt and phosphate catalyst is used to make the split and when the energy is needed the recombination of hydrogen and oxygen can be used in a typical fuel cell to create a whack of electricity. So efficient is this process that researchers claim a PV setup of 5 by 6 meters and a bottle of water can meet the energy needs of the average house for a day. Old school PV simply converted sunlight into heat energy at far lesser energy transfer efficiencies. Another perk is that it works with dirty old water - no need for the clean drinkable stuff - and is pretty cheap compared to typical solar setups which require the ridiculously pricey platinum to split the water molecule. This mimic of plant photosynthesis could be a big step to making hydrogen energy economically feasible and relevant to many applications. Its high efficiency and cheaper - good news for clean energy.
