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MIT's artificial leaf is ten times more efficient than the real thing

MIT's artificial leaf is ten times more efficient than the real thing
Speaking at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in California, MIT professor Daniel Nocera claims to have created an artificial leaf, made from stable and inexpensive materials, which mimics nature's photosynthesis process. The device is an advanced solar cell, no bigger than a typical playing card, which is left floating in a pool of water. Then, much like a natural leaf, it uses sunlight to split the water into its two core components, oxygen and hydrogen, which are stored in a fuel cell to be used when producing electricity. Nocera's leaf is stable -- operating continuously for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity in preliminary tests -- and made of widely available, inexpensive materials -- like silicon, electronics and chemical catalysts. It's also powerful, as much as ten times more efficient at carrying out photosynthesis than a natural leaf. Those are impressive claims, but they're also not just pie-in-the-sky, conceptual thoughts.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/28/artificial-leaf

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A new dimension for solar energy - MIT News Office Intensive research around the world has focused on improving the performance of solar photovoltaic cells and bringing down their cost. But very little attention has been paid to the best ways of arranging those cells, which are typically placed flat on a rooftop or other surface, or sometimes attached to motorized structures that keep the cells pointed toward the sun as it crosses the sky. Now, a team of MIT researchers has come up with a very different approach: building cubes or towers that extend the solar cells upward in three-dimensional configurations. Amazingly, the results from the structures they’ve tested show power output ranging from double to more than 20 times that of fixed flat panels with the same base area. The biggest boosts in power were seen in the situations where improvements are most needed: in locations far from the equator, in winter months and on cloudier days.

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Natural photosynthesis is so ancient that it cannot distinguish between carbon dioxide and oxygen - hence the low efficiency. by pauljacobson May 12

The end of the Age of Burning? It is coming! Of course, Nocera's work is focussed on a hydrogen & oxygen economy - different in quality from the water-based economy of electricity and oxygen that will be the ultimate solution. Check it out in my New Energy Pearltree. by pauljacobson Apr 1

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