will Hydrogen boost Solar?

[daveb]

Here's a link to a Popular Mechanics article about a recent MIT breaktrhough, essentially electrolysis so cheap it'll be affordable for every household.   solar energy not used during the day will be used to make hydrogen which will store the energy for use at night when the sun doesn't shine...

act*ally the title of the article is backwards,  should read "will solar save the fuel cell"   

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/energy_digital/4276071.html

[aviken]

Very interesting. We'll see if it takes 10 years to get out of the lab or whatever.

[lenapralos]

This reminds me of Stanley Meyer's water car and special resonant frequency circuit he used to break water into H2 and O2 using very small amounts of electricity.  Fact or fiction, you decide.  Only this process uses certain metals as catalysts to reinforce the process rather than resonance.  Unfortunately this route has been used by many would be scientists for a long time.  Some guy on an ebay related site has been selling special "aluminium + something else" plates to speed electrolysis to the point of more power out than in efficiency - for the past 5 years and no one bought into it because it still requires a fresh supply of raw materials - Just like this new MIT discovery.  Only this time the raw materials are cobalt and phosphorous.

I heard Stanley Meyers died of food poisoning or some type of poisoning after a government sponsored dinner shorty after actually assisting the armed forces with one of his designs.  Strange.  It's the year 2008 and we still drive cars that use piston driven gas burning engines, rarely anything else.  And well this Meyers guy "biffs it" all of a sudden after driving a water powered car across the U.S.

I think the only technologies normal people will be allowed to use or know about in most 1st world nations will be  piss weak stuff like this supposed MIT breakthrough.  Anything better is quite seriously sealed off in an Indiana Jones Lost Ark Box

-j

[aviken]

Ah, the X-Files generation...or post X-Files Gen...

I have to simply agree with you. The oil companies - and the government (Most across the world, but certainly ours) is not above taking drastic measures to conceal information, or to keep people quiet. Breaking the law? Of course. Assassination / Murder? It's happened before, and history tends to repeat itself. What that the case here? I don't know, don't know that it matters too much - we do know that it happens, and that there is a real threat when something can shift billions of dollars. The people with the money are greedy and want to hold on to it.

I actually think it happens less and less frequently (knocking folks off). They (Governments, Oil industry, to an extent the less powerful Auto industry), are so arrogant in the power, that they think they can use their ties in the media etc to squash any ideas that threaten them. They get to control things with very little bloodshed...but I'm sure it still happens. It must happen once and a while to put fear into others who have the knowledge and drive to stand up to them.

Luckily I have neither, so I am not a threat. Did you read that? No need to knock me off. He he he

[Tasha Faith]

Nice info i heard about that . The highest efficiency for solar concentrator cells, as measured at NREL, is now above 37%. Solar ... a 40% boost in hydrogen production by separating the solar infrared