Could be another pie in the sky idea, but one could always hope. – Anthony
A new catalyst could help speed development of inexpensive home-brewed solar energy systems for powering homes and plug-in cars during the day (left) and for producing electricity from a fuel cell at night (right). Credit: Patrick Gillooly/MIT
BOSTON — The era of personalized energy systems — in which individual homes and small businesses produce their own energy for heating, cooling and powering cars — took another step toward reality today as scientists reported discovery of a powerful new catalyst that is a key element in such a system. They described the advance, which could help free homes and businesses from dependence on the electric company and the corner gasoline station, at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, being held here this week.
“Our goal is to make each home its own power station,” said study leader Daniel Nocera, Ph.D. “We’re working toward development of ‘personalized’ energy units that can be manufactured, distributed and installed inexpensively. There certainly are major obstacles to be overcome — existing fuel cells and solar cells must be improved, for instance. Nevertheless, one can envision villages in India and Africa not long from now purchasing an affordable basic system.”
Such a system would consist of rooftop solar energy panels to produce electricity for heating, cooking, lighting, and to charge the batteries on the homeowners’ electric cars. Surplus electricity would go to an “electrolyzer,” a device that breaks down ordinary water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen. Both would be stored in tanks. In the dark of night, when the solar panels cease production, the system would shift gears, feeding the stored hydrogen and oxygen into a fuel cell that produces electricity (and clean drinking water as a byproduct). Such a system would produce clean electricity 24 hours a day, seven days a week — even when the sun isn’t shining.
Nocera’s report focused on the electrolyzer, which needs catalysts — materials that jumpstart chemical reactions like the ones that break water up into hydrogen and oxygen. He is with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. Good catalysts already are available for the part of the electrolyzer that produces hydrogen. Lacking, however, have been inexpensive, long-lasting catalysts for the production of oxygen. The new catalyst fills that gap and boosts oxygen production by 200-fold. It eliminates the need for expensive platinum catalysts and potentially toxic chemicals used in making them.
The new catalyst has been licensed to Sun Catalytix, which envisions developing safe, super-efficient versions of the electrolyzer, suitable for homes and small businesses, within two years.
The National Science Foundation and the Chesonis Family Foundation provided funding for this study. Nocera did the research with post-doctoral researcher Mircea Dinca and doctoral candidate Yogesh Surendranath. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency has recently awarded the team with a grant, which it plans to use to search for related compounds that can further increase the efficiency of its electrolyzer technology. The team hopes that nickel-borate belongs to a family of compounds that can be optimized for super-efficient, long-term energy storage technologies.
The American Chemical Society is a non-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 161,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
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“”” B. CH.E. says:
September 1, 2010 at 6:36 pm
This research was summarized in a recent issue of Chemical and Engineering News, a weekly publication of the American Chemical Society whose Editor-in Chief is a confirmed AGW supporter. The details of where the oxygen goes were not disclosed. Also in a recent issue was a report on development of flexible plastic solar cells rather than rigid glass-covered ones. If successful, they could be made very cheaply. “””
This sort of thinking illustrates what is wrong with the alternative energy crowd.
Solar energy (any renewable) arrives on earth at a max rate of about 1 KWatt/m^2. So inefficiency translates into coverage area. You can’t cover a large area with Saran wrap or Aluminium foil cheap enough to meet the needed cost of a PEV installation.
So for PEV the three most important system parameters are conversion Efficiency, Conversion efficiency, and Conversion Efficiency.
There are NO other important system parameters.
So cheap doesn’t cut it; land area costs money; and if you are going to put up something that can withstand a 150 years storm; then neither Saran Wrap nor Aluminum Foil will work.
There’s a Silicon valley “solar energy” company; that is burning its way through 500 million dollars of taxpayer backed Government loan money; they haven’t yet made a dime; they most likely never will make a dime; and they don’t seem to understand that a flat plate of width W has exactly the same projected area as a cylinder of diameter W.
But we do have a couple of PEV comapnies who understand that only efficiency counts. They probably will make some money; the rest will become the bubble bust of the 201x decade; and take a lot of investors with them.
Just imagine the haggle you can have with your neighbor over his Maple tree shading your solar array.
Already in Si Valley, a Judge has told a home owner to cut down his tree that has been there for decades; because his neighbor decided to erect a brand new solar array underneath that tree.
Go figure who is really green.
It’s another pie in the sky all right.
I will file it in the same drawer as the water propelled car engine, the super battery at the size of a washing machine that would be on the market one year ago at the price of US $ 2.000,- and the endless air machine that came with two free tin hats.
I am only interested in compatible energy solutions that I can simply can buy under guarantee and send back at a refund if they don’t meet my expectations.
The true reason we see an endless stream of so called “new energy” applications is to make people think they don’t have to depend on carbon fuels in the near future.
Nobody can look into the future but carbon fuels will be with us for a long time to come.
The only way such systems will make economic sense is in rural areas and populations who will be satisfied with a low energy density life style.
If you are a village that has no commercial power and all the people want is a radio or TV that they can view in a recreation center like environment and a hand full of low energy LED lights along with a small super insulated refrigerator it might be viable.
A few years back I went entirely off the grid and lived on such a system for about 6 months (summer in Colorado) using only about 40 sq ft of solar panels but you had to be very judicious with energy usage to not exhaust the storage batteries.
I had no heating demand because of the season and hot water and cooking were on a propane camp stove.
It can be done but most people in the industrial world simply would not even contemplate this low of an energy life style.
Bottom line it can never out put more energy than it can collect at the solar panel.
If you assume that the total solar energy in a location is about 4 Kilowatt hours/ meter^2 per day, and then start to budget that energy including collection efficiencies and conversion efficiencies you are talking about a pretty good solar panel array for even modest energy requirements.
If you take a minimal energy profile like a community center in a tropical country where you are powering:
(2) 12 watt CFL bulbs for night light 6 hours a day 144 watt hours
Small TV for 6 hours a day (perhaps 70 watts x 6 = 420 watt hours) per day
Small refrigerator 500 watts consumption with a 30% duty cycle = 4000 watt hours/day
Small computer for 6 hours at 80 watts for 6 hours a day or 480 watt hours.
That would yield a “delivered power” of at least 5044 watt hours per day.
If you assume a solar panel has about 15% recovery efficiency over all (yes I know some are better than that) that would require about 17 Meter^2 of solar panel with a safety factor of 2x just to meet this minimum demand.
In short just to meet 3rd world minimum power levels for such a community resource center you would have to cover a good fraction of the roof with solar panels. For industrial developed world power consumptions nearly the entire roof of the home would have to be dedicated to solar panels. At about $600/meter^2 panel cost you are talking about something in excess of $10,000 USD just for the solar panels for a subsistence level of power production.
Larry
2 things.
1. I like the bluegen system. No personal connection, just think it could be economical. Seach on bluegen. Gas powered fuel cell 1.5 kW generate at home 24/7 they claim up to 60% efficient. Hot water is a side product.
2. I’ve seen compressed air storage systems for enterprise scale power storage. Has anyone done the sums on a household system ? ie use solar to pump up a tank via 12v motor and pump then bleed off to an alternator/air motor at night.
Maybe this is a scam. I’ve seen a lot of them over the years. I’m not judging until I’ve seen some details.
Swimming pools need pumps. The pump on my pool requires 220 volts.
Air conditioning requires 220 volts.
Stored heat is nice, but fans are needed to distribute it.
And home heat and cooking heat I get from gas.
Really only the coffee maker and the dishwasher use electric heaters.
My needs run far beyond the emergency radio and electric toothbrush.
I have toys.
I do not intend to give them up, nor do I believe that cutting down on my use of electricity can or will benefit anyone else on Earth.
How can it ?
I would be happy to get some personal power and ease the load
and save some cash, I just don’t see why the power company would pay me for using my own electricity.
I also don’t see how third parties can sell me the same electricity cheaper
though 5 of them call me every week.
I would much prefer that my local utility be both robust and fairly priced. More nuclear please.
OOH I am an ugly American.
Okay. The World would need over a billion units. What resources would be required. How much energy would be needed to build them, how much toxic chemicals would be created in the process?
In the UK [and much of the northern hemisphere] most energy would be produced in summer, and most energy would be needed in winter [a problem with most renewables]. How will this system change that?
How is the hydrogen and oxygen stored? In big gas storage tanks, balloons, or at high pressure using compressors? Would tanks of explosive gases be allowed near homes?
In fact, using hydrogen and oxygen to store energy at the domestic level seems a stupid idea! Also he points out that the input, solar cells, are not efficient enough, and the output, fuel cells, are not sufficiently efficient! There is nothing left of this idea!
PS. Distilled water is not pleasant to drink!
_________________________
Note that the idea of creating hydrogen as fuel for cars, with an oxygen by-product, could be useful for wind turbines as they are removed from the electricity grid. An industrial unit could be connected to large arrays of wind turbines so that these otherwise white elephants could perform some kind of useful function in their twilight years.
I have designed a triple cycle solar heat pump, that provides hot water, space cooling and electricity. It is much simpler, cheaper and can be backed up with batteries.
It is also manufactured with simple proven components.
Solar is limited by the available watts per square metre, thus the third cycle extracts energy from rising warm air.
Similarly, current corporate wind farms use 1944 propeller technology that no matter how well designed are very heavy and very inefficient. I have a design that can be up to 100 times more efficient and thus have practical home owner usage. The same concepts can be used to extract power from water currents, such as the gulf stream. A string a 100 miles long could easily generate 5 gigawatts plus. It would be cheap as well.
Smokey says:
September 1, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Another kind of personal energy system here.
or a similar contraption out which comes…
whiskey 😉
It would be interesting if we could get to such a system someday, but I doubt we will for two main reasons:
(1) I seriously doubt many people would invest the time to understand their home power station and therefore be able to maintain and use it properly.
(2) The demand curve described above is skewed. Most people’s cars are at home during the day only 2/7 of the time, and those people would come home and charge the car, turn on the TV/PC, start laundry, dishes and the stove. The battery/capacitor/fuel cell would have to be able to discharge at a very high rate and I’m not certain we’ll get to that capability on a personal level within a reasonable cost.
Thorium reactors, anyone?
PV systems are economically viable in certain parts of the US.
Twin market distortions — very high electricity rates and large subsidies
for PV equipment — make PV attractive in California. Here in SoCal we
have plenty of sunlight and VERY steeply progressive rates for electrical usage.
A system designed to both take advantage of the subsidies and blunt the
steeply progressive costs is easy to buy and install. Assuming you do the
calculations and the installation, you can have a system that pays for itself
in 6-7 years. After that you get 10-15 years of “free” electricity.
Nobody will actually sell you such a system. The installers and vendors get
paid more for selling more product. But the consumer has a definite ROI
peak, and that peak is far away from the ROI peak of the solar salesman.
This could turn out to be interesting, but it strikes me as one small advance in a system that needs 7 or 8 major breakthroughs before it can be commercially viable.
Want to bet hemp is involved?
No way Anthony because it has to do with energy density and the maximum density of solar insolation succinctly put into perspective here-
http://brookesnews.com/?p=92
George E. Smith says:
September 1, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Energy in the home is utilised mostly in the form of “heat”. For washing cooking and coffee.
It should be a capital felony offense to consume electricity to create “heat”.
So solar energy should be captured in the home as heat and stored as heat. You need several “qualities” of heat. Flat plate colelctors are ok for swimming pool heaters; parabolic troughs can make truly hot water for laundry, dish washing, and showers. And three dimensional focussing can generate cooking temperatures.
Then you need a couple of square feet of PV cells to run your emergency radio, and the electric toothbrush.
putting up acres of solar cells is the brute force expensive way to do it. You can use a basement full of volcanic rocks (scoria) to store plenty of hot air.
Going pEV is like longlining for sailfish, marlin and tuna to grind up for fertilizer to grow corn and vegetables. People should be shot for doing that.
Am I seeing a trend here?
I just want to say I mentioned this but I didn’t link it.
Honda System
http://world.honda.com/FuelCell/FCX/station/
Scroll down to see the Home system.
No I don’t work for Honda. But their stuff works . This will eventually work
or else they will take the page down LOL.
There still are a few possible kinks to work out, it seems …
For those who advocate nuclear, the link below should give some pause for thought.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/nuclear-nuts.html
The article above describes a form of DG – Distributed Generation – which is highly encouraged by many utilities. I agree with the nay-sayers above, that this is hopelessly inefficient. The Honda Motor Company recently made a presentation to me and other chemical engineers on their hydrogen fuel cell car and the solar-based PV system to split water to produce the hydrogen, located in Torrance, California. see http://ieahia.org/pdfs/honda.pdf for photo of the system as Figure 1.
The system described in the article above is essentially the same, excepting the Honda refueling station does not send power into a grid or for home use.
No one could afford to buy one of these unless he or she has excess money to waste.
Nothing new here. More of the same: hopeless hydrogen hype. The ACS should know better – those guys (and ladies) are generally pretty smart. As a chemical engineer, I associated and worked with many of them over the years.
“The responsible government agency” – you made me laugh, Phil’s Dad.
read “inexpensive home brewed” and got excited.
then I read the rest and… pfft… it’s about electricity. bummer.
Idea -> plan -> manufacturing -> mining -> tailings storage -> highways -> diesel fuel -> trucks -> more manufacturing -> batteries -> battery chargers -> electric motors -> land fill
Clean?
I think a personalized energy system may be wishful thinking for now. But what about all the energy that goes into lighting, not to mention the 90% of the energy in lights that is wasted by heat. What of looking into new bioluminescent lighting technology where none of the energy s wasted as heat? None of the energy would be produced by electricity either, but it would still have the same lighting effect. Anyone know of anything like this in the making?
Curiousgeorge says: – – – “vaporware”
September 1, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Bingo!
I’ll be long gone before this makes a dent in supplied energy.
On the other hand, here is an alternative:
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2469
E = mc^2
Toshibas’ mini-nuke is the way to go. While it has merit, this is not viable yet.
The first home Fuel cell is going to be a winner too…
Wonderful and promising, in the absence of subsidies.
If it stands on its own and develops a customer base, that’s great.
I love the idea of going off the grid, but when I researched both solar and wind, it doesn’t work. Even with the subsidies from taxpayers and Excel Energy, it still costs something like $30,000 to replace only 60% of your electric usage. That’s maybe 1/3 of our monthly bill and the ROI is something like 50 years. It’s too bad, we have the perfect roof facing directly south and Colorado’s infamously sunny days.
For wind, you need at least an acre of land and the expense and ROI are about the same as solar.
Give me clean coal any day. It should be a crime to burn natural gas to create electricity.