Friday, February 12, 2010

Solar "power" hydrogen production - the 60 percent solution

Efficiency may be improved and lower cost materials used.
Finding an efficient non-central way to produce hydrogen is a key
barrier to adopting hydrogen fuels for transportation and other uses,
like a home powered partially or in full by a fuel cell. Fuel cells were used in the Apollo space program, hydrogen and oxygen were combined to produce power and the exhaust, waste, was water.

Sunlight + water = hydrogen gas, in a new technique that can convert 60 per cent of sunlight energy absorbed by an electrode into the inflammable fuel.

Sunpowered water splitter makes hydrogen tirelessly

Update: This company made the fuel cells for Apollo and they still make them, some of them large, UTC Power Fuel cells