Direct Conversion of Sunlight to Hydrogen – Cheaply

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

We’ve witnessed several attempts to produce an “artificial leaf,” a device emulating the photosynthesis of plants, but providing hydrogen and oxygen that could power fuel cells in electric vehicles instead of plant sugars to make trees and flowers grow.  One of the biggest problems so far has been the rare and costly materials necessary to generate hydrogen. Ècole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (EPFL) scientists have come up with a low-cost alternative, using abundant materials called perovskites and budget electrodes to produce hydrogen from water with a 12.3 percent conversion efficiency – a record for fairly common materials. Perovskites are a calcium titanium oxide mineral that come in a variety of colors and can be bog-common or extremely rare, approaching rare earth mineral status.  The CaTiO3 used by Michael Grätzel is of the common variety, but that doesn’t seem to detract from its performance as a hydrogen-production agent. That, and the inexpensive materials used in the device’s electrodes cause Jingshan Luo, a post-graduate …