Now here is some hopeful news from MIT. Maybe if Big Oil supported this kind of development rather than "Drill Now! Drill Here!" We could solve our energy problem.

Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution
Scientists mimic essence of plants' energy storage system

Anne Trafton, MIT News Office
July 31, 2008

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.

See MIT News (http://tinyurl.com/5uu53h) for the complete story.

How was this research funded, BB? Did any grants come from the major US oil companies?

If this works, it would be a tremendous breakthrough in a functional, renewable, non-carbon based energy resource.

There are other proven uses of solar energy, such as the high altitude, British-built, drone glider that broke the world's endurance record for sustained flight just the other day.

I don't want to deflect the gist of your post, but I do wonder why the US oil companies haven't come up with anything other than 'drill more--pay more.'

This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years.

There was no mention of any oil company participation. Of course, I wouldn’t expect any. Some companies do fund university research, but it is almost always for a specific project having the potential for immediate benefit to the company.


True. The biggest gain seems to be in the efficiency of the catalysts involved; Cobalt for Hydrogen and Platinum for Oxygen, with research going on for a less expensive substitute for Platinum. Of course the catalysts, by definition, are not consumed in the process. As the end product is just pure water, which is then fed back to into the process, there is nothing consumed except sunlight and no waste products at all.

According to a different article the process works directly using sunlight, without having to have a solar cells to drive the electrolysis and ultimately converted to electricity by a fuel cell. The hydrogen and oxygen are used directly during the day and the excess stored for later usage during the night. MIT is also working on using the same process to make methanol using Carbon Dioxide in the process. That would have the advantage of being easier to carry in vehicles. The overall methanol production and use cycle, is 100% Carbon-neutral; that is, instead of generating more greenhouse gas--as fossil or bio fuels do--it does not add more carbon dioxide to the environment.

From the standpoint of other pollutants it simply doesn’t produce any. Conventional internal combustion engines use atmospheric air as the source of Oxygen. At high temperatures the nitrogen (70% of air) combines with the oxygen producing oxides of Nitrogen: smog. By using pure oxygen, there is no Nitrogen in the cycle.


Yes, you are right. The US has a solar powered recon vehicle under development that would stay up for months at a time. Storing electricity for use at night with minimum weight is a major problem. I would be surprised if DARPA doesn’t start to fund this MIT research.


My opinion is that they are Oil Companies, not Energy Companies. Their assets are fossil fuel deposits and their job is to convert those deposits into dividends for their shareholders. Since they get compensated based on how much profit they make, and since they will be retired before their assets are used up, there is no incentive to spend money for long term gains. That also explains why they don’t build new refineries.

Interesting development, but I think the efficiency of solar cells needs to increase and their cost needs to come down before solar technology really becomes mainstream. Fortunately there has been progress in the last few years in both cost and efficiency.

You are right, photo-voltaic solar cells' efficiency has been steadily improving and costs decreasing. That is important from an initial cost standpoint (More efficiency=fewer cells required.) Equally important is the cost of storing energy for low/no sun periods. That is where the really big gains come with this new process for generating H2 and O2. Since it is more efficient it reduces the number of cells required. Of course any essentially passive system will have lower maintenance cost and zero operating cost than what we have now.

Actually, there are two related processes being worked on: high-efficiency electrolysis (above) and direct generation of H2 and O2 from sunlight, mimicing photosynthesis. The H2 and O2 can be stored and fed directly to a fuel cell, with no intermediary conversion to electricity. MIT is collaborating with CalTech on that one.

Both of these processes appear to be so simple that their development and deployment time should be very short: perhaps shorter than the time needed to drill off-shore oil wells.

As a secondary effect, this could be a paradigm shift from using the power grid to distribute centrally generated power to distributed users. Power would be generated at the point of use. This would at least partially obviate the need to upgrade our existing decrepit and overburdened power grid (presently needing 1/2 Trillion dollars of work!) It also avoids the cost of getting energy (oil/gas) to the users--unless the power companies/government figure out some way to charge for sunlight.