SunCatalytix electrolyzer

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.--The ARPA-E Summit, held earlier this week, is called an "energy innovation summit" to highlight some of the clean-energy technologies funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). At the conference, several awardees and finalists for grants showed off research in many areas, including energy storage, solar, converting carbon dioxide into fuels, and wind power.

Seen here is prototype of an electrolyzer from Sun Catalytix which splits hydrogen from water. The company is already developing a relatively inexpensive catalyst for a traditional electrolyzer. An ARPA-E grant funded longer-term work to generate hydrogen gas--the bubbles floating up from the square--from a photovoltaic cell in water using its catalyst.