This is a shameful announcement. It makes the populace think there is a wonderful new energy technology.
This is funding season and this is a tawdry example of scientific pandering. ________________________________ From: Jones Beene <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2017 10:36 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Vo]:Nature reporting overunity? Robin Wiki agrees that "quantum efficiency" is the ratio of the number of charge carriers (in the case of water that would be protons) which are collected by the solar cell, compared to the number of photons of a given energy incident on the solar cell. This is essentially what you said and it means that the useful efficiency of solar water splitting, in terms of hydrogen output per unit of area, is limited to UV irradiance, which is a fraction of normal sunlight. The bond enthalpy of OH-H is 268 kJ/mol or 2.78 eV which is essentially in the UV range for photons. Most UV is captured by the atmosphere but enough gets through to make it interesting. The band gap of silicon for photovoltaic is only 1 eV but the coupling losses are huge so the comparative efficiency is below 20%. Thus splitting water via sunlight would be viable, especially for automotive uses once the problem of storage is solved. Moreover, the "waste" visible sunlight not robust enough to split water can still produce electricity so a combined facility would be advantageous. To put this new report about overunity water splitting into perspective - it should mean that making hydrogen as well as making electricity are complementary processes - and once the storage problem is solved, hydrogen could be the favored output. Fortunately, there is a German company which seems to have solved the hydrogen storage problem in a unique way - as a solute not requiring pressurization. http://www.hydrogenious.net/en/energy-storage/ Energy Storage - Hydrogenious Technologies<http://www.hydrogenious.net/en/energy-storage/> www.hydrogenious.net Hydrogenious Technologies developed the breakthrough in hydrogen storage. The safe and efficient storage of hydrogen in Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC). This has "automotive" applications written all over it. Will the new Tesla be a German startup which is quickly snatched up by VW or Mercedes? [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> wrote: In reply to Jones Beene's message of Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:32:42 -0700: Hi, [snip] A double miracle.... since ostensible OU was reported by Nature, the anti-miracle(anti-LENR) mag... There may or may not be an LENR connection here. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170425124226.htm An overunity giant step toward producing hydrogen fuel? Essentially, they created what is known as a quantum dot photoelectrochemical cell that catalytically achieved quantum efficiency for hydrogen gas production exceeding 100% -- approaching 114% ... ...but hey - we can be happy, even elated with 99% since solar to electric only gives about 18%. However, you may want to contemplate how quantum efficiency differs from the normal variety... I think quantum yield is just the number of electrons per photon. In which case it's not surprising that they exceed 100%, since some high energy photons are capable of creating multiple free electrons. This may happen when a high energy photon is absorbed, ionizing an atom and leaving the electron with enough excess kinetic energy to ionize another atom. Hence two free electrons iso one. Last year (I think) I tried pointing out to Mills that his optical spectrum was ideal for taking advantage of this principle, but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. (Most of the energy he produces is in the UV to soft x-ray band.) Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
