# Lifestyles & Discussion > Freedom Living >  MIT: Artificial Leaf Developed That Can Power a House

## ronpaulhawaii

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/P...wlc=1301842350




> Scientists at MIT have created what may be the first practical artificial leaf -- a device about the size of a playing card capable of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen and storing the energy in a fuel cell. Placing the leaf it in a single gallon of water in sunlight could produce enough electricity to supply a house in developing countries with its daily electricity requirement, according to researchers.
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> ...
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> "It's really cool stuff -- they're taking a solar cell and turning it into a battery," ...

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## acptulsa

Carl Howe is using a terrible analogy in that piece.  It isn't a battery.  It cannot create electricity, if I'm reading that right, except to perform hydrolysis on the water.  It then produces hydrogen and oxygen, which can be burned to (among other things) produce electricity.  It's unclear if the solar-hydrolytic cell is the fuel cell as well, or if it passes its output on to a fuel cell.  The people who wrote the article seem to be running on some thin rumors.

I could go for putting some water and one of these in a glass fuel tank when I get to work, and letting the sunlight make enough hydrogen to get me home.

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## pcosmar

Placing the artificial leaf it in a single gallon of water in bright sunlight could produce enough electricity to supply a house in developing countries with its daily electricity requirement,

So just what is the "daily electrical requirement" in a house in a "developing" country?

Aside from that it seems that they may be improving on photoelectric efficiency. And cracking ph neutral water is a plus.

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## acptulsa

> Aside from that it seems that they may be improving on photoelectric efficiency. And cracking ph neutral water is a plus.


Odd the improvement in a panel that only cracks water.  Apparently the water improves the efficiency somehow.

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## Texan4Life

He is demonstration of artificial photosynthesis: http://video.pbs.org/video/1768954299

The whole episode is good, but it starts @ 48 min

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## tangent4ronpaul

http://sfc.mit.edu/project4.htm

This project addresses one of the outstanding “holy grails” of science in the 21st century - the efficient and economical storage of solar energy in the form of fuels. The goal is to imitate photosynthesis, the process by which plants separate water into hydrogen and oxygen using solar light as the energy input. The proposed device uses a PV to capture and convert absorbed light into charge-separated holes and electrons. Specially designed catalysts will capture the holes and electrons and use them to transform water into its chemical constituents, hydrogen and oxygen. The energy of those products will be released in a fuel cell, which recombines the hydrogen and oxygen to form water to start the process again. This advance will deliver water - with solar light as an input - as a renewable, environmentally benign storage vehicle for the future.

http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/dgn/www...ch/solar.shtml

The group has also created new H2O splitting catalysts. As has been widely discussed, the production of oxygen from water has been the primary barrier to efficient water splitting. The Nocera group has overcome this challenge with the discovery of cobalt and nickel catalysts that duplicate the solar fuels process of photosynthesis outside of the leaf - an artificial photosynthesis. Like the oxygen evolving catalyst (OEC) of photosynthesis, the new catalysts in the Nocera labs self assemble from water to form a partial cubane structure, they are self-healing and they split water to hydrogen and oxygen using light from neutral water, at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. The catalyst operates at 100 mA/cm2 at 76% efficiency. Moreover it can operate out of any water source including the Charles River in front of MIT. Finally, the ability to split neutral water has led to the discovery on an inexpensive H2 producing catalyst that operates at 1000 mA/cm2 at 35 mV overpotential. These catalyst discoveries have enabled the construction of inexpensive water splitting devices that may be coupled to either a photovoltaic panel or coupled directly to the surface of a semiconducting substrate (thus eliminating the module costs associate with a photovoltaic panel). This science discovery sets a course for the large scale deployment of solar energy by providing a mechanism for its storage as a fuel, especially for those in the non-legacy world.
Recent Publications

    I just love seeing all those solar panels (Nachrichten aus der Chemie)
    Halogen Photoreductive Elimination from Gold(III) Centers (J. Am. Chem. Soc.)
    A Self-Healing Oxygen-Evolving Catalyst (J. Am. Chem. Soc.)
    In Situ Formation of an Oxygen-Evolving Catalyst in Neutral Water Containing Phosphate and Co2+ (Science) 

Publications are linked to from URL

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