Solar hydrogen fuel dream will soon be a reality Australian scientists predict that a revolutionary new way to harness the power of the sun to extract clean and almost unlimited energy supplies from water will be a reality within seven years. Using special titanium oxide ceramics that harvest sunlight and split water to produce hydrogen fuel, the researchers say it will then be a simple engineering exercise to make an energy-harvesting device with no moving parts and emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants. It would be the cheapest, cleanest and most abundant energy source ever developed: the main by-products would be oxygen and water. “This is potentially huge, with a market the size of all the existing markets for coal, oil and gas combined,” says Professor Janusz Nowotny, who with Professor Chris Sorrell is leading a solar hydrogen research project at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Centre for Materials and Energy Conversion. The team is thought to be the most advanced in developing the cheap, light-sensitive materials that will be the basis of the technology. “Based on our research results, we know we are on the right track and with the right support we now estimate that we can deliver a new material within seven years,” says Nowotny. Sorrell says Australia is ideally placed to take advantage of the enormous potential of this new technology: “We have abundant sunlight, huge reserves of titanium and we’re close to the burgeoning energy markets of the Asia-Pacific region. But this technology could be used anywhere in the world. It’s been the dream of many people for a long time to develop it and it’s exciting to know that it is now within such close reach.”
The results of the team’s work will be presented in Sydney on 27 August to delegates from Japan, Germany, the United States and Australia at a one-day
International Conference on Materials for Hydrogen Energy at UNSW. Among them will be the inventors of the solar hydrogen process, Professors
Akira Fujishima and Kenichi Honda. Both are frontrunners for the Nobel Prize in chemistry and are the laureates of the 2004 Japan Prize.
Since the Japanese researchers’ 1971 discoveries, science has made major advances in achieving one of the ultimate goals of science and technology -
the design of materials required to split water using solar light. The UNSW team opted to use titania ceramic photoelectrodes because they have
the right semiconducting properties and the highest resistance to water corrosion.
Solar hydrogen, Professor Sorrell argues, is not incompatible with coal. It can be used to produce solar methanol, which produces less carbon dioxide
than conventional methods. “As a mid-term energy carrier it has a lot to say for it,” he says.
Vast new energy source almost here
Converting material matter into energy
Almost anything will burn if you get it hot enough; but asside from fission, fusion, and water power, most of the energy we use these days comes from easily combustible matter such as wood, coal, or petroleum products. Through the years we’ve learned to safely control and direct this combustion with external combustion steam engines and internal combution gas; diesel, jet and rocket engines.
Our dependence on petroleum products has increased over the years, and our realization that the supply is limited has increased our efforts to find similary safe and inexpensive materials from which to extract energy.
If it’s any help; the process of converting material matter into energy goes something like this: First comes the conversion to the molecular motion of heat, which creates expansion, and thrust; which is used directly in jet and rocket engines or converted to molar linear, or rotary motion through various levers and cranking mechanisims.
The gathering and storing of solar energy must be approached carefully and regulated so as not to upset our environment and nature’s balance;
where the solar energy received each day is given off each night: But maybe a safe compromise can be arranged.
Solar Energy Milestones
For thousands of years people have used sunlight to warm their homes. Socrates (470-399 B.C.) taught the importance of placing homes so the interior rooms could warm the interior rooms during winter. Here are just a few highlights of historic solar energy developments: Destruction of Roman fleet (212 B.C.) – Archimedes is reported to have ignited invading Roman ships by means of reflected sunlight. Diamond melted (1695) – Two Italian experimenters succeeded in melting a diamond using focused sunlight.
Solar furnace (1774) – The French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier made a solar furnace that melted platinum. Solar powered printing press (1878) – A large parabolic reflector collected enough sunlight to power a printing press. Solar steam engine (1901) – A.G.Eneas designed a solar steam engine that pumped irrigation water in Arizona. Sunlight was collected by 1,788 mirrors installed in a fixture that resembled a giant umbrella 33.5 feet (about 10 meters) in diameter. Solar engine (1908) – John Boyles and H.E. Willsie demonstrated a 15 – horse- power engine powered by pools of water that captured and stored the heat from sunlight.
Solar electrical plant (1913)- Frank Shuman and C.V. Boys built the world’s first solar-powered electrical plant near Cairo, Egypt. The huge facility
used seven solar collectors, each 204 feet (about 62 meters) long. The collectors had a total area of 13,000 square feet (about 1,208 square meters). They automatically tracked the sun.
Solar oven (1925) – C.G. Abbot of the Smithsonian Institution cooked meals using a solar-powered oven at his sun observatory on the Mount Wilson,
California. Solar furnace (1950′s) – French scientist Felix Trombe designed the world’s largest solar furnace. This facility, whose 9,000 mirrors are installed on the side of a building, can reach the temperature of the sun’s surface, 10,000 degrees fahrenheit (about 5,538 degrees celsius).
Silicon solar cell (1954) – Gerald Pearson, Daryl Chapin and Calvin Fuller of Bell Laboratories development led to the modern era of photovoltaic solar
power conversion. Mid-East oil crisis (1970′s) – The oil crisis of the 1970′s stimulated significant new research in solar energy. Old kinds of solar energy systems were improved and new kinds were developed. Thin-film solar cell (1980′s) – Many kinds of solar cells have been developed, but thin-film cells of silicon and other semi-conductors are among the most important. They can be made as flexible sheets much larger than standard silicon solar cells.
Cost of Renewable Solar Energy
Solar, by itself, is regional. It will never work as well in the north as it does here (Arizona). With the large power grid it could, in theory, power ~25% of the US. But, one of the strength of solar is the ability to decentralize power production.
If the gov. were to fund large solar projects, they would have to be balanced by other renewable sources in other states.
If they were to support a project in AZ, TX, NM, NV and CA (mostly) for initial power production. Then direct all money made selling the power be used to expand the systems. Eventually, it would grow into a major source of energy.
During the CA crisis a couple of years ago, they ran an article in the local paper. If we covered a square in the desert 120 miles X 120 miles, we could power the entire US. In reality, transmission and storage would make this model un-workable. But, it does show that with current technology, solar does have the potential to supply a great deal of our energy needs.
Each year, traditional energy sources get more expensive and solar energy technology improves. It is growing faster every year. It may never be the primary source of power, but it will become more significant each
year.
Solar energy supplying two million barrels per day equivalent
Energy is the ultimate, irreducible essence of the universe. It is required for cooking food, for illuminating houses and streets, for our comforts in the form of fans, coolers, airconditioners, etc, for all kinds of transportation, for running industries. Even agriculture, which used to depend entirely on human and animal power, now depends heavily on
primary fuels owing to increasing mechanisation of modern agricultural techniques.
The future demands for energy are likely to go up both on account of increasing population and due to steady improvement in the standard of living. It is estimated that
by 2025, the minimum world energy requirement will be 490 x 1018 Joule. This figure could, however, be as high as 1390 x 1018 Joule. Thus, in order to meet the increasing demand for energy for our ever-burgeoning population, a case for solar energy must be made.
Solar radiation is virtually an inexhaustible energy source. The earth receives an annual energy from the sun amounting to 1 x 1018 kWh. This is equivalent to more than 5,00,000
billion barrels of oil or about 1,000 times the energy of the known reserves of oil or more than 20,000 times the present annual consumption of energy of the world.
The incoming sunshine is absorbed by a number of different processes. Some of it is absorbed by green plants for the growth of organic matter. Part of the energy absorbed by the atmosphere and the earth s surface is converted into wind, because the heating rate is not equal over the globe. Another part provides energy for evaporation of water which
consequently returns to the earth as precipitation and thus gives us running water energy. The remainder of the absorbed sunshine goes into the heating of land and water masses.
Efficient attraction of all the sun s energy is difficult. Solar energy is a very dilute source and is available only at intermittent intervals. In addition solar climates vary greatly.
The most favourable sites for collecting and exploiting solar energy are confined to areas between latitudes 35 degree north and south of the equator. Some 2000-3500 hours of sunshine are received by these areas every year; the amount of solar energy incident on a horizontal surface ranges from 3.5 to 7 kWh/m2/day.
Solar research and technology aims at finding the most efficient ways of capturing dispersed solar energy and developing systems to store the collected heat for use at
night or during overcast periods. The rate at which solar energy will become widely used depends on the research and development efforts to overcome the technical, economic and institutional barriers. Questions of cost, materials requirement, efficiency, reliability and acceptability need to be answered. At the current rate of development, solar energy will contribute 1-2 million barrels per day of oil equivalent, i.e. 620 x 109 to 1240 x 10 9 kWh per year, for all industrialised countries this year. Most of this amount comes from hot water systems and solar space heating.
Methods currently contemplated to tap solar energy are divided into direct and indirect methods, and range from small systems for individual homes to massive systems orbiting the earth. Solar energy can be used for a variety of applications, such as for:
Heating water for domestic, industrial and agricultural purposes
Drying agricultural/industrial products
Space heating and cooling
Refrigeration for preservation of food
Desalination of water
Cooking of food
Mechanical power production and
Electricity production.
Solar energy has certain positive and negative attributes when applied to thermal processes.The intermittent nature of the resource both on daily and shorter time scales is the major technical obstacle for solar applications. The intermittency leads to a storage
requirement not present in non-solar systems. The extra cost and complexity of storage (solar energy cannot be stored in its primary form) is a negative attribute of solar energy systems.
A good solar climate for efficient operation is also required for solar systems. This implies a regional or geographic effect which may be at odds with the geographical distribution of energy demands and the land which can be denoted to solar collectors to meet those demands.
Finally solar systems must meet the criterion of economic competitiveness in order to be widely adopted.
World consumes about 200m barrels eq so this is a respectable figure.
Solar energy has several unique features which place it in an advantageous position vis-a-vis progressively more scarce fossil fuels. Most of the materials required for making
solar collectors and controls are easily available and are not very complex to design.
In addition by the proper application of solar technology, an excellent thermo-dynamic match between the solar energy resource and many end uses can be achieved. On the contrary, the match between fossil or nuclear fuels and most industrial end uses is notoriously bad, with low efficiencies of 10 per cent or less.
Currently, the heat required by the industry is obtained by oil, natural gas, coal or electricity. But a large portion of industrial process heat is at sufficiently low temperatures which can be supplied by solar energy. The year round need for energy in industries allows a maximum utilization of solar equipment.