Science 2.0.com reports on an exciting potential breakthrough in solar energy and its direct transformation into hydrogen fuel. Usually, solar cells generate current from photons, making electricity which can run things or be stored in batteries. This new and different approach, using an innovative and inexpensive solar cell and a metal oxide photo anode, can store nearly five percent of solar energy chemically as hydrogen. The metal oxide bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) photo anode includes a small dose of tungsten atoms, was then sprayed onto conducting glass and “coated with an inexpensive cobalt phosphate catalyst,” which helped speed up oxygen formation during water splitting. Science 2.0 reports Professor Dr. Roel van de Krol’s remarks. He’s head of the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin Institute for Solar Fuels, and worked with researchers there and at Deflt University. “Basically, we combined the best of both worlds. We start with a chemically stable, low cost metal oxide, add a really good but sim ple silicon-based thin …
A Matter of Great Faith
A technique used by jungle aviation missionaries over 50 years ago may provide an answer to aerial delivery problems such as dropping water on the current radioactive fires in Japan, according to Gaylord Olson, a Princeton, New Jersey reader of the CAFE Blog. Nate Saint was a Mission Aviation Fellowship pilot and missionary to the Auca Indians in the Ecuadorian jungle when he and four others were killed in 1956 by members of the tribe. Life Magazine published a 10-page article on the group’s martyrdom, and two movies depicted their lives and last hours. Saint was also an inventive soul, who may have know about early patents for a system he called the “bucket drop,” a method for delivering equipment and supplies to the floor below a rain forest canopy. In the video, Saint’s son Steve demonstrates the technique. Researchers at Mississippi State University adapted the technique to two-aircraft use, as described in a 1983 paper by Francis M. Wilson, …