Scientists Create World’s 1st Practical Artificial Leaf, 10X as Efficient as the Real

[To Be Quite Honest]

Renewalbe energy made from a fake plant?

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80...he-real-thing/

This week, scientists say that they’ve passed a chemistry milestone by creating the world’s first practical photosynthesis device. The playing-card-sized photosynthetic gadget creates uses sunlight to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, which can then be used to produce energy, and is reputedly 10 times more efficient than a natural leaf. Researchers say they expect it to revolutionize power storage, especially in remote areas that don’t currently have electricity.

[TylerSVT]

If it can split it into hydrogen... wouldnt that be a great way to capture hydrogen needed for fuel cells?

[Young-Sneezy]

i saw this on digg today... I'm sure some environmental group will come and complain about how this is disrupting some sort of environmental eco system-something and cry enough until it gets shut down...

[Thor]

Wow:

If the device is placed in a one-gallon bucket of water in bright sunlight, it can reportedly produce enough electricity to power a house in a developing nation.

[photon]

Um, it's not fuel storage, it creates hydrogen and oxygen which just float away unless you do something else with them.

Interesting if true, unfortunately there's no paper to go along with it.

The next question is how expensive will they be per volume hydrogen or unit electricity generated, because if they take a ton of money to make, it still doesn't help.

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by photon

The next question is how expensive will they be per volume hydrogen or unit electricity generated, because if they take a ton of money to make, it still doesn't help.

And in 1994, a blank CD-R cost $80.

[SebC]

It's not doing anything we can't already do, but doing it more efficiently (especially in terms of cost efficiency) is huge.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Thor

Wow:

I'm calling baloney.

A deck of cards has the surface area of 57.15cm2. One square meter is 100x100cm, or 10,000cm2. So a deck of cards has 0.005715 the surface area of a square meter, lets call it 0.6%

Let's also assume that the fake plant thing is 100% efficient, which is impossible.

Solar radiation at best is like 400W/sq.m. and we'll ignore the fact that it's much less in the morning or evening.

So 12 hours of sun at 400w/sq.m for a deck of playing card sized thing is... 28.8 Watt-hours.

You could run a CFL for 2 hours. Assuming 100% efficiency of conversion of sunlight, 100% conversion of the hydrogen and oxygen to electricity, no losses anywhere, and you're living on the equator.

Or you could leave it in the bucket for a week and have enough to heat a burrito.

EDIT: Now if you can cover your roof with the stuff, now we're talking.

[To Be Quite Honest]

Originally Posted by photon

Um, it's not fuel storage, it creates hydrogen and oxygen which just float away unless you do something else with them.

Interesting if true, unfortunately there's no paper to go along with it.

The next question is how expensive will they be per volume hydrogen or unit electricity generated, because if they take a ton of money to make, it still doesn't help.

While there is no paper and only this article so far, and the "plant", let's call it "Silky", has only lasted for 2 day's, I think it is still is very exciting.

Silky is different from the other previous attempts because of the materials they use. Imagine buying a platinum based fake plant!

My concern is how effective is it? What is Silky's Life expectancy? And will it match my home decor?

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by photon

Um, it's not fuel storage, it creates hydrogen and oxygen which just float away unless you do something else with them.

Interesting if true, unfortunately there's no paper to go along with it.

The next question is how expensive will they be per volume hydrogen or unit electricity generated, because if they take a ton of money to make, it still doesn't help.

Using Nickel and Cobalt will certainly help keep this thing cheap, when some previous tries used stuff like platinum.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Traditional_Ale

And in 1994, a blank CD-R cost $80.

That's very true, if you can bring the cost down then it's all good.

But bringing down the cost of solar has been on the agenda for a long time, so it's not for want of trying.

I would love for this to work; solar is the ideal solution to energy.

EDIT: For sure using cheaper materials is great, but lots more info is needed.

[To Be Quite Honest]

Originally Posted by photon

I'm calling baloney.

A deck of cards has the surface area of 57.15cm2. One square meter is 100x100cm, or 10,000cm2. So a deck of cards has 0.005715 the surface area of a square meter, lets call it 0.6%

Let's also assume that the fake plant thing is 100% efficient, which is impossible.

Solar radiation at best is like 400W/sq.m. and we'll ignore the fact that it's much less in the morning or evening.

So 12 hours of sun at 400w/sq.m for a deck of playing card sized thing is... 28.8 Watt-hours.

You could run a CFL for 2 hours. Assuming 100% efficiency of conversion of sunlight, 100% conversion of the hydrogen and oxygen to electricity, no losses anywhere, and you're living on the equator.

Or you could leave it in the bucket for a week and have enough to heat a burrito.

Well... Let's wait for some of Silky's facts before we dry up a wet dream shall we?

[photon]

Originally Posted by To Be Quite Honest

Well... Let's wait for some of Silky's facts before we dry up a wet dream shall we?

None of Silky's facts can make it magic; it still has to work with the energy it's given.

If Silky's cheap enough and durable enough to put all over your roof, no problem.

But they're the ones that gave the pack of cards in a bucket example which is completely impossible.

[To Be Quite Honest]

Originally Posted by photon

None of Silky's facts can make it magic; it still has to work with the energy it's given.

If Silky's cheap enough and durable enough to put all over your roof, no problem.

But they're the ones that gave the pack of cards in a bucket example which is completely impossible.

LOL I understand. I'm just teasing. I do that a lot and it never translates well over the internet texts.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by photon

None of Silky's facts can make it magic; it still has to work with the energy it's given.

If Silky's cheap enough and durable enough to put all over your roof, no problem.

But they're the ones that gave the pack of cards in a bucket example which is completely impossible.

In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!!!

[Bertuzzied]

Originally Posted by Thor

If the device is placed in a one-gallon bucket of water in bright sunlight, it can reportedly produce enough electricity to power a house in a developing nation.

Must suck to live in Vancouver.

[octothorp]

Just looking at the numbers that state it's 10x as efficient as a leaf (which is about 3% efficiency), that puts it more or less on par with high-quality solar panels. So you'd still need something roughly equivalent to solar-panel-like coverage to produce a useful amount of energy. However, even if did have solar-panel-like efficiency, this would in some ways be more useful than solar panels in an off-the-grid system, since the hydrogen would be a more evenly storable energy-form than electricity.

[frinkprof]

A Leaf that's 10X as efficient as a real one eh? I bet if you put 20 of them together, they STILL couldn't win a Stanley Cup.

[IliketoPuck]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

A Leaf that's 10X as efficient as a real one eh? I bet if you put 20 of them together, they STILL couldn't win a Stanley Cup.

Ahem. Ladies and gentlemen, drum roll please.

[HPLovecraft]

This is all well and good until the leaf turns on humanity and self-replicates into a hundred-billion-human-civilization-destroying man-eaters.