Sorry folks - not all that much of a breakthrough http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/4/13531/71482
>From Joe Romm, who knows what the fuck he is talking about when it comes to energy tech. ================================= You say you want a revolution ... 'Major discovery' from MIT unpractical, and ignores present advances in solar baseload Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 9:26 PM on 04 Aug 2008 I have gotten bombarded by too many people asking me if the story headlined above is true. It isn't. Not even close. Science magazine, which published the supposedly "major discovery" by MIT's Daniel Nocera, headlined their story, "New Catalyst Marks Major Step in the March Toward Hydrogen Fuel" ($ub. req'd). Doh! But who needs a major step towards hydrogen? And Science seems to be having problems with the laws of physics, as we'll see. I thought I had explained this to Scientific American, but given their puff piece -- the findings "help pave the way for a future hydrogen economy" -- I obviously failed. Let me try again. MIT had the sexier headline on unleashing the solar revolution. Too bad that headline isn't accurate for two mains reasons: The solar revolution already has been unleashed, and if it hadn't been, this technology wouldn't do the trick even if were near commercial, which it isn't. MIT reports: In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative [!] into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine. Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy. As we'll see, they have not developed an efficient storage process -- and we have no idea if it's cheap because they don't have anything near a commercial prototype (indeed, they have not even solved all of the scientific challenges). But in any case, we already have an inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy -- it's called solar baseload. Yes, solar PV would benefit from cheap storage, but PV's biggest problem is simply its high price, which is expected to drop rapidly in the coming years. And, in any case, for industrialized countries, you can't get too excited about storing daytime PV electricity -- which avoids expensive peak power -- and shifting it to the nighttime, where extra power is almost worthless. But I digress. It is the details of this "major discovery" that render it quite unexciting and unmajor: Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon." Note to Nocera: "Nirvana"? That takes the hype about hydrogen to a new level. In any case, solar power is already unlimited and soon. Solar baseload and solar PV are seeing explosive growth now and by 2015, they will probably both be cheaper than new nuclear -- and cheaper than new coal and new natural gas if we have a price for emitting carbon dioxide that comes anywhere near close the damage those emissions due to the climate. Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night. [In the voice of Jon Stewart] Oh press release from my beloved alma mater, why do you mock me? Who exactly is going to buy this electrolyzer, plus a home hydrogen storage system, plus an expensive fuel cell -- for the sole purpose of taking valuable zero-carbon peak electricity and throwing more than half of it away in the round trip, all for the luxury of having nighttime power which we can buy for virtually nothing on the grid. Why not just run your friggin' electric car on cheap wind power that blows mainly at night? And the coverage gets better -- if by better I mean worse -- courtesy of Science: The catalyst isn't perfect. It still requires excess electricity to start the water-splitting reaction, energy that isn't recovered and stored in the fuel. Oh related story from a beloved science journal that published "A Road Map for U.S. Carbon Reductions," why do you mock me? Did Science really think that even an illustrious MIT scientist could violate the laws of physics and split water into hydrogen and oxygen using less energy than is recoverd and stored in the fuel (i. e. emitted when the oxygen and hydrogen are recombined)? If you could do that, why bother with solar energy -- just split the damn water and recombine it, extract the excess energy, and repeat over and over and over again. You'd have a terrific free-energy-generating perpetual motion machine and a Nobel prize and probably never grow old and get to date Uma Thurman. And for now, the catalyst can accept only low levels of electrical current. Nocera says he's hopeful that both problems can be solved, and because the catalysts are so easy to make, he expects progress will be swift. No. I'm sure Nocera does not believe the first problem can be solved as it would require violating laws of thermodynamics, and he is a "Professor or Energy" at MIT. Read the rest: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/4/13531/71482 Yeah Joe's sarcasm gets a little heavy handed. But the hype on this deserves it. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
