This is more Nocera "no-sera" nonsense ... He now admits: "It may not be anywhere near as efficient as some of the best hardware on the market" Nocera said, " it's off by about a factor of 10, in fact - but it's something that could be deployed even in countries without much in the way of a GDP." (due to low cost presumably?)
I hate to break it to him, but cobalt is not that cheap ($40 a pound) ... and "off by a factor of 10" must means 2 % efficiency, since silicon is about 20% efficient, on average. BTW - it is true that Silicon "was" in short supply back in 2007, when Nocera made this over-hyped discovery, but recently it has dropped to about $18 pound ... and that seems to be a huge improvement over cobalt - so where's the beef? Somebody forgot to inform the professor that his entire cost rationale has disappeared. This guy Nocera, geeze ... he acts more like a publicity hound than scientist - and at any other place than MIT, wouldn't he be labeled as a scam artist ? -----Original Message----- From: Horace Heffner http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/11/making-a-simple-hydrogen- production-system-even-simpler.ars http://tinyurl.com/yft53y6 " ... one potential route to simplifying things down: it might be possible to get rid of the photovoltaics entirely", " ... the cobalt phosphate catalyst can be made to form directly on the surface of a photovoltaic material, where it harvests the charge differences directly, rather than requiring that they be piped in as current from an external source." "The research was done with a rather unusual photovoltaic material: zinc oxide, better known as a component of some sunblocks." " ... the whole process of harvesting the charge separation, with its associated equipment and cost, could be done without-if the cobalt catalyst was placed in close enough proximity to the zinc oxide, it could directly harvest the charge differential from the surface to split water." Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
