The noteworthy things about this "artificial leaf"
announcement are that it:
(1) Claims to use only materials that are inexpensive
(2) Claims to work well at small (household) scale.
(3) Comes from well-known MIT professor, not a random quack.
(4) Already has serious commercial backing.
(5) Doesn't include any real technical details.
(6) It sounds too good to be true & the field is littered with fakes
As I see it:
o 1-3 are enough to pay attention to it.
o 4 means that all the hype is inevitable -- no biggie.
o 5 is somewhat worrying but less so, given 3
o 6 is very worrying... but again, MIT doesn't suffer fools lightly
After the cold fusion debacle, I think most folks just don't
get too worked up until they see something actually work.
-Jon
* Eugen Leitl ([email protected]) [110329 04:21]:
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 06:58:26AM +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote:
> > We should make a webpage where we track the performance over time of all
> > these worldchanging claims. Maybe Eugen already has one?
>
> Eugen doesn't, but this one doesn't even need debunking.
>
> Meanwhile, water electrolysis has been practical since 1869,
> and thin-film photovoltaics continues further its exponential
> price decay, at increasing EROEI (43:1 for CdTe, or thereabouts).
>
> Installed solar PV peaks at 17 GW at the moment, for 85 GW peak demand --
> and that's Germany, not India
>
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Solar_land_area.png
>
> --
> Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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