MIT spin-off stores sun's energy to power the world

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--MIT professor Daniel Nocera is a "huge centralized energy person" but when he looks at the world's energy challenges, he thinks the key is to make energy generation cheap and distributed.

MIT last year announced that a technology developed by Nocera's lab-- a catalyst that can split water--could be used store solar energy. Earlier this year, Nocera formed a company called Sun Catalytix, backed by venture capital firm Polaris Ventures, to commercialize that discovery.

Engineers are now working on a prototype design for the system, Nocera said at the EmTech conference on emerging technology last Thursday. He added that the company has also hired Art Goldstein, the retired CEO of water desalination company Ionics which was purchased by General Electric, to be chairman.

Sun Catalytix is pursuing a breakthrough system that would use cheap solar panels to produce hydrogen, which would be stored and then used to produce electricity in a fuel cell.

(Credit: MIT)

"This technology is moving really fast. We're already at the engineering prototype design. I'm hiring no scientists--I'm just having a massive engineering effort right now," he said. "Within two years, we want to have a totally working kilowatt system."

However, a fully functioning system will take more like 8 or ten years because it requires multiple components, including hydrogen storage, cheaper solar panels, and cheaper fuel cells.

Shooting for the moon
The team at Sun Catalytix is pursuing a technological and commercial breakthrough--not an incremental improvement to solar technologies, as fellow MIT spin-off 1366 Technologies is doing.

The core of Sun Catalytix's technology is a cobalt phosphate catalyst that is more efficient at splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen than other materials, according to Nocera. During his talk, he said that it will work under ambient temperatures and with a wide range of water quality--the lab has tested water from the Charles River in Boston and it operates well.

There are already commercial electrolyzers that split water to make hydrogen, but they are expensive and require a significant amount of energy to run. Sun Catalytix is testing an electroylzer, built around the catalyst, that can be manufactured using cheap PVC plastic, Nocera said.

The idea is to use solar panels to power the electrolyzer to produce hydrogen which would be stored in tanks. When people need electricity, the stored hydrogen would be put through a fuel cell.

Nocera calculates that three liters of water a day could power a home, or a fuel cell car in the "legacy world," or rich countries with a high standard of living. In poor countries where people don't use much energy, three liters would make a dramatic difference, providing power for several people, he said.

Billions of people in countries of Africa or in India use little energy today but that is changing rapidly. So even if richer countries use energy efficienctly, the world's energy needs will continue explode in the coming decades, making cheap, distributed energy essential, he said.

The key to Sun Catalytix's technology is a catalyst made from a cobalt phosphate material that can split water into oxygen and hydrogen more efficiently than current products.

(Credit: MIT)

"The solution, assuming the legacy world does the right thing (and use energy efficiently), to this problem for the future is attacking the non-legacy world and they don't have any money. That's the challenge," he said.

Typically what happens in energy research is that engineers try to shrink large-scale systems down, but that approach doesn't work because the costs of manufacturing don't go down enough, Nocera argued. Batteries, in his view, don't have sufficient energy density to be cheap enough for storage on a wide scale, while fuel cells offer more promise.

"What you need in my opinion is to start with a blank piece of paper and start inventing. Don't take what's there and try to reengineer it."

For Sun Catalytix's vision to take hold, however, it needs more than a cheap electrolyzer. Also required is a hydrogen storage tank, which is not a big technical or commercial challenge. A cheap hydrogen fuel cell still needs more work but is attainable. "I don't need a fuel cell that's in a Toyota or Honda car. I need all the technology they threw away 20 years ago because they couldn't get high enough power density for a car," he said.

Similarly, relatively inefficient amorphous silicon solar panels need to be cheaper but would suit the application he envisions of a distributed power source for poor countries.

"We have to get away from how we think about how we live in the legacy world (because) that will not be the solution for the non-legacy world," he said.

[jaguar717]

"We have to get away from how we think about how we live in the legacy world"

There you go. To the command and control types, individual freedoms and the innovation and standards of living they've brought are just a "legacy". Instead of trying to extend those freedoms everywhere and bring everyone up, they intend to institute every control they can.

Equal grinding poverty for all at the hands of Omnipotent Government. Naturally the Anointed Ones will be issues exemptions while we peons see our energy bills quadrupled with every tax and fee they can think of.

[JoeNYC]

The legacy world is the one in which we demand ever more energy from finite supplies. With some basic logic you can foresee the end of that world just through fuel depletion. You want to shut down scientists like this that are trying to solve our energy problems by spouting political rhetoric. It's fine to be skeptical but you're just being a political shill.

[eeemang]

..way out there...what is this comment about??? you must have clicked too far away from the poli sci/philosophy webs and landed here?

[iptofar]

Indication of the efficiencies would have been nice in this article. There is now way to tell if it's green fanaticism or something real that makes sense. The major component that is not discussed the compression or storage method of the hydrogen which could blow the entire scheme. But it's not like people could cover their roofs with solar cells and have enough hydrogen to power their car.

[ddhboy]

What a bunch of bull. There's nothing stopping poorer nations from putting up solar panels themselves except the cost and maintenance of the panels, and while these one off shots of electricity may appear cheaper, they will cost far more in the long run. If anything a system like this would just keep poor countries subservient, but only in the interim until panels become cheaper or China gives subsidized panels to African nations in exchange for mining rights and oil rights.

[CorwinB]

Get a reality check bro. Just about every nation in the world is outpacing the US as far as solar energy goes. There are even remote villages that have never had power that do now because of solar. their needs are so much less than those of the industrialized world that a couple of panels can change their standard of living immensely. power for water pumps, a few lights and refrigeration for a few rounds of antibiotics or inoculations makes a world of difference to a highly impoverished village. A village with a couple of solar panels is a village of gods compared to their former lifestyle and it's happening. All the while us wealthy superior americans are about to run out of energy and live the way they used to because we have to protect big oil untill they decide we are alowed to have solar panels.

[jaguar717]

Just about every nation in the world also outpaces the US in government control of the individual and looting the masses to reward favored groups.

None of that changes the fact that solar is still 10x the cost with a breakeven point measured in decades (ie about the time the panels die). They're only "outpacing" us in how much of everybody's paycheck they grab to turn around and throw it away on inefficient tech that enriches the guys in on the racket.

And when some billionaire throws a ton of money at setting up a solar array in that African village to showcase "green tech", that's not a solution. That's one guy throwing tons and tons of resources at a big handout that by definition can't be multiplied the world over without bankrupting everyone many times over.

It's like if I were to buy some poor guy a Porsche and declare it a "solution" to poverty.

[CDaleB]

This is one overriding problem with this solution and any solution that involves cracking water to get hydrogen. Where is the water coming from? Some areas are naturally arid and have long histories of water wars such as the one over who gets what from the Colorado River. Other areas are suffering drought. And then there is the ongoing expansion of the human population eating into the water supply.

So until there is a cheap and reliable way to desalinate water, and transfer it thru pipelines or canals water cracking will remain an elusive goal

[ashevillejax]

"overriding problem with this solution and any solution that involves cracking water to get hydrogen."

Nope! The artificial photosynthesis apparatus cracks the water with solar photons and the water gets used over and over again. The fuel cell recombines the H2 and O. There are numerous promising technologies under development for hydrogen storage without significant pressurization energy required. http://cleantechnica.com/2008/10/06/scientists-reach-hydrogen-storage-milestone/
and metal hydrides http://www.cleanfuelcellenergy.com/Ovonic_hydrogen.html
The list of research projects and patents pending is long.

[Dr_Zinj]

Actually, if you read the article, water quality isn't a problem. Unless the salt water poisons the cobalt phosphate catalysis, the fact that you're using sea water instead of fresh is irrelevant. And if I remember correctly from high school chemistry, sea water is more ionized and is easier to crack into hydrogen and oxygen than pure water. Worst comes to worst, you can take waste treatment plant water and use it.

The biggest concern I have about the process is how much energy is lost in the conversion process. Solar electric is horrribly inefficient, with at best, about 15% of the light actually being converted into electricity. Cracking into hydrogen and oxygen is going to have a loss, which the cobalt phosphate catalyst is supposed to minimize. Compression for storage will eat up another bunch.

[CDaleB]

This is one overriding problem with this solution and any solution that involves cracking water to get hydrogen. Where is the water coming from? Some areas are naturally arid and have long histories of water wars such as the one over who gets what from the Colorado River. Other areas are suffering drought. And then there is the ongoing expansion of the human population eating into the water supply.

So until there is a cheap and reliable way to desalinate water, and transfer it thru pipelines or canals water cracking will remain an elusive goal

[Reza_Sadj]

The beauty of this approach is that water could be purified in the process. Seawater + sunlight = freshwater + electricity. The difficult technical hurdle that Nocera's catalyst overcomes is the splitting of water without massive inputs of energy. Before this discovery, only Iceland could consider a hydrogen economy. This is not cold fusion...read the Science paper from August, '08.

[carlhage]

There is a lot of misleading information reported about this MIT electrolysis technology. The catalyst doesn't create the hydrogen-- it's the electricity applied. What matters is the efficiency, and the MIT researchers or Sun Catalytix have not published the efficiencies obtained (in the articles I read). A main advantage is that it uses cobalt instead of platinum, so it's economically practical. Moving from 50% efficiency to 80% is significant, but it's still overall inefficient.

For energy storage it's the round trip efficiency. Typical figures are about 50% efficient for small electrolizers and 50% for fuel cells, so the round trip process is around 25%. But even if this catalyst makes a big improvement, and fuel cell efficiency can be improved as well, it is still much worse than a battery. Ultimately it will come down to cost per kWh-- will batteries or will fuel cell+electrolyzers be better?

The article above mentions only a few liters of water is needed for household electricity-- so getting water is not a problem, and it's also not a significant amount for water purification. Yes, massive amounts of electricity would be needed to purify a significant amounts of water-- the catalyst doesn't magically remove the need for added energy to split water.

At atmospheric pressure, it takes 11m3 to store 1kg of H2-- that's a lot of space. Compressing it would reduce that, but then more energy is lost. Batteries seem more practical.

[eeemang]

New tech is what is being proposed here and all the comments dragging in old established "that is how we have always done it" thinking will not lead to new innovations

THE most important section of this story :
"....start with a blank piece of paper and start inventing. Don't take what's there and try to reengineer it."

EXACTLY : that is what we hope will produce a world in the near future that does not depend on the same old technology.

[paemans]

This technology could actually be employed right now using H2ICE (hydrogen internal combustion engines) instead of fuel cells. There are demonstration units on buildings in Hong Kong that use excess electricity from the grid during the night to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, efficiently store the hydrogen, and then use the H2ICE as a generator during the day when the grid is prone to brown outs. The photocatalyst discussed above could take the place of drawing electricity off of the grid, thus producing new electricity instead of just storing it. When/if an efficient fuel cell is developed, it could be plugged into the system replacing the H2ICE.

[henryhayne]

There is a significant problem with hydrogen production. Hydrogen is a slippery molecule. It escapes through seals, even metals. No long term study has been done on the effects of higher hydrogen levels in the atmosphere. It is known that too much hydrogen and ozone is destroyed. A large hydrogen economy is going to require very stringent engineering to prevent this.

[lordreading]

I belong to Pakistan where the electricity shortage resulting in long outages has become a serious problem. Why don't you start solar power project in that country? It would perhaps be more feasible even cost-wise here as our government is planning to purchase very costly energy on rental basis.