United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

On Thursday, MIT News announced “a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source.”[1] -- Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy Daniel Nocera said that “a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storying solar energy” developed in his lab “is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years. Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.” -- A paper describing the process was published Thursday in Science. -- “The key component in Nocera and Kanan's new process,” Anne Trafton reported, “is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate, and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity — whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source — runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced. -- Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis. -- The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it's easy to set up, Nocera said. ‘That's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement,’ he said.” -- A professor at Imperial College London called Nocera’s achievement “a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind. The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem.” -- Nocera hopes that within ten years “homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.” -- The New York Times was more restrained in a page-15 article, calling Nocera’s one of “two new scientific papers show progress in materials science and chemistry that could cut the cost” of solar energy.[2] -- A Christian Science Monitor reported at length on the announcement, but also injected a note of caution: “Scientists don’t normally talk like this . . . it’s hard not to think of the story in the satirical Onion newspaper titled ‘Amazing New Hyperbolic Chamber Greatest Invention in the History of Mankind Ever.’”[3] -- Scientific American said that the advantage of Nocera’s process is that instead of using as a catalyst for electrolysis platinum, which costs costs about $1,700 to $2,000 per ounce, it uses cobalt and phosphate, which cost about $2.25 an ounce and $.05 an ounce, respectively.[4] -- “But that still leaves plenty of platinum in the other side of the equation: the fuel cells that combine hydrogen and oxygen back into water to harvest electricity,” Cynthia Graber noted, referring to the other paper alluded to in the New York Times piece mentioned above: “Chemist Bjorn Winther-Jensen of Monash University in Australia and his colleagues addressed that problem by developing new electrodes for fuel cells made from a special conducting polymer, that costs around $57 per ounce.” -- The abstract of the Science article is posted below.[5] ...

“MAJOR DISCOVERY” FROM MIT PRIMED TO UNLEASH SOLAR REVOLUTION
By Anne Trafton

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

The key component in Nocera and Kanan's new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity -- whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source -- runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it's easy to set up, Nocera said. "That's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement," he said.

Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world's energy problems, said Nocera. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet's energy needs for one year.

James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.

"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London. "The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem."

Currently available electrolyzers, which split water with electricity and are often used industrially, are not suited for artificial photosynthesis because they are very expensive and require a highly basic (non-benign) environment that has little to do with the conditions under which photosynthesis operates.

More engineering work needs to be done to integrate the new scientific discovery into existing photovoltaic systems, but Nocera said he is confident that such systems will become a reality.

"This is just the beginning," said Nocera, principal investigator for the Solar Revolution Project funded by the Chesonis Family Foundation and co-Director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. "The scientific community is really going to run with this."

Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.

The project is part of the MIT Energy Initiative, a program designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today's energy systems. MITEI Director Ernest Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, noted that "this discovery in the Nocera lab demonstrates that moving up the transformation of our energy supply system to one based on renewables will depend heavily on frontier basic science."

The success of the Nocera lab shows the impact of a mixture of funding sources -- governments, philanthropy, and industry. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years.

Storing energy is a crucial but expensive component of plans to turn intermittent sources of energy, like wind and sun, into reliable replacements for coal and natural gas. But two new scientific papers show progress in materials science and chemistry that could cut the cost.

The advances apply to the process of converting electricity into hydrogen for storage and then converting the hydrogen back to electricity when needed. The first half is done in an electrolyzer, which splits a water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen, and the second half in a fuel cell, which puts them back together.

Such a process would make a power system based on sources like sun and wind more reliable because it could be counted on regardless of weather or hour.

Splitting a water molecule is an experiment familiar to generations of high school chemistry students. In common industrial practice, it involves a container with water at a very high pH and a base like lye. The container is sealed to keep out contaminants like carbon dioxide, which is present in the atmosphere. But in one paper scheduled for publication in the journal *Science* on Friday, two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology describe a technique that works at ambient temperatures and pressures in ordinary water.

“Trees don’t grow in base; they grow in regular water,” said one of the researchers, Daniel G. Nocera, a professor of energy at the institute, who compared the process to photosynthesis, nature’s way of storing energy by separating hydrogen and oxygen.

Because the conditions are benign and the chemistry works at a small scale, Dr. Nocera said, this electrolyzer could be incorporated into a solar cell, which would turn out hydrogen rather than electricity.

The system could use saltwater. When the hydrogen and oxygen recombine in the fuel cell, the result is pure water, raising the possibility that the technology could be used for desalination.

The second article in *Science* describes building a fuel cell without a platinum catalyst. Fuel cells are declining in price, but the price of the platinum alone exceeds the price of an internal combustion engine of the same power, according to a paper by a group from the Australian Center for Electromaterials Science at Monash University.

The group developed porous polymer material for use as an electrode that gives the same performance as platinum.

A big drawback of solar power is that it doesn’t work at night or on cloudy days. But researchers at MIT say they now have an inexpensive way to store solar energy when the sun isn’t out.

Daniel Nocera, a chemistry professor at MIT, and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Mr. Nocera’s lab, have developed a catalyst made from cobalt and phosphate that can split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas. When used in conjunction with a photovoltaic solar panel, their system can use water to store the sun’s energy.

A press release from MIT explains how it works: “The key component in Nocera and Kanan’s new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity -- whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source -- runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

“Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.”

At night, the hydrogen and oxygen can be recombined into a fuel cell to produce a carbon-free electric current that can power your home or charge an electric car.

Wired explains why this system represents a breakthrough: “Solar energy currently makes less than one percent of the world’s electricity. The main drawback of the technology, preventing wider adoption, is that solar systems only make power while the sun is shining. At night or on cloudy days, those in need of power must look elsewhere. So storage of electrical energy has been a long-sought after technological advance. Batteries work but they’re too big and expensive. Fuels, fossil or renewable, are different: They act as their own storage, allowing for easy transport and usage. That’s one reason that coal and oil have such a dominant hold on the world’s energy market.”

But how much water would it take to power a home? The *Guardian* suggests that it would be less than a gallon a day: “Converting an Olympic swimming pool of water into hydrogen and oxygen per second would create 43 terawatts of power. ‘In the next 50 years, the world needs 16 terawatts. By the end of the century, we’ll need around 30,’ said Nocera. ‘There’s a heck of lot of energy stored in chemical bonds.’

“For a home, Nocera said that it would be enough to split a few liters of water per day into hydrogen and oxygen. The water would be reformed when the gases were put through the fuel cell.

“There is much work to be done in converting Nocera’s idea into a commercial product. At the moment, his catalyst can only accept small amounts of electrical current at once, meaning that it would be an inefficient way to quickly store large amounts of energy. But Nocera is certain that engineers will iron out the issues and produce commercial-scale products within a decade.”

Nocera and Kanan are not the first to come up with a way of splitting water molecules to produce hydrogen and oxygen. The process, known as electrolysis, was discovered as early as 1800. But electrolysis has always required expensive machines using exotic metals or nanoparticles, and it has required the water to be pressurized and heated. Nocera and Kanan’s process uses common elements to split room-temperature water.

“This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said Nocera in the press release. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”

Scientists don’t normally talk like this, and Nocera is not alone in his robust claims. The MIT press release quotes James Barber, a biochemist at Imperial College London who was not involved in this research.

“This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind,” he said. “The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem.”

(At this point, it’s hard not to think of the story in the satirical Onion newspaper titled “Amazing New Hyperbolic Chamber Greatest Invention In The History Of Mankind Ever.”)

This is the second time this month that MIT has made headlines with advances in solar technology. Two weeks ago researchers in the university’s engineering school announced that they had developed an inexpensive mixture of organic solar concentrating dyes that can be painted on to windows.

** Chemists have devised less expensive methods for tapping the energy potential of this ubiquitous element **

The fuel of the future could be hydrogen -- if it can be made cheaply enough. Currently, electrolyzers (machines that split water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen) need a catalyst, namely platinum, to run; ditto fuel cells to recombine that hydrogen with oxygen, which produces electricity. The problem is that the precious metal costs about $1,700 to $2,000 per ounce, which means that hydrogen would be an uneconomical fuel source unless a less costly catalyst can be found. But researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and Monash University in Australia report in Science today that they may have a cost-effective solution.

Chemist Daniel Nocera, head of the M.I.T.'s Solar Revolution Project, focused on one side of the equation: splitting water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen molecules. This can be done well, but it remains difficult to actually separate the molecules. But Nocera and postdoctoral fellow Matthew Kanan discovered it could be accomplished by simply adding the metals [sic] cobalt and phosphate to water and running a current through it. In contrast to platinum, cobalt and phosphate cost roughly $2.25 an ounce and $.05 an ounce, respectively.

"We [have] figured out a way just using a glass of water at room temperature, under atmospheric pressure," Nocera says. "This thing [a thin film of cobalt and phosphate on an electrode] just churns away making [oxygen] from water."

Inspiration for the new catalyst came from nature; Nocera studied the chain of processes that take place during photosynthesis, such as how plants use the energy from sunlight to rearrange water's chemical bonds. In a future hydrogen economy, he imagines, a house would function much like a leaf does, using the sun to power household electricity and to break down water into fuel -- a sort of artificial photosynthesis.

According to John Turner, a research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., who was not involved in the research, the discovery could reduce the need for platinum in a conventional electrolyzer. He believes it could also play a role in a future large-scale hydrogen generator, which would collect the energy from sunlight in huge fields and then run that electric current through water to produce vast amounts of hydrogen to meet, for example, the demand from a future fleet of hydrogen-powered vehicles. "That's what his advance is pointing towards," he says, "finding an alternative catalyst that will allow us to do oxygen evolution (breaking the bonds of water or H2O and forming oxygen) in concert with hydrogen" on a grand scale.

But that still leaves plenty of platinum in the other side of the equation: the fuel cells that combine hydrogen and oxygen back into water to harvest electricity. Chemist Bjorn Winther-Jensen of Monash University in Australia and his colleagues addressed that problem by developing new electrodes for fuel cells made from a special conducting polymer, that costs around $57 per ounce.

During experiments, the polymer proved just as effective as platinum at harvesting electricity -- and the work could prove immediately relevant in mini fuel cells, such as the kind that are being designed for computers.

In order for this to work on the grand scale of a fuel cell stack for a hydrogen vehicle or power plant "we need to develop a more three-dimensional structure to get thicker electrodes and a higher current per square centimeter," says Winther-Jensen. Regardless, by reducing or eliminating platinum, the two studies help pave the way for a future hydrogen economy.

IN SITU FORMATION OF AN OXYGEN-EVOLVING CATALYST IN NEUTRAL WATER CONTAINING PHOSPHATE AND Co2+
By Matthew W. Kanan 1 and Daniel G. Nocera 1*

1 Department of Chemistry, 6-335, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139–4307, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Daniel G. Nocera , E-mail: nocera@mit.edu

The utilization of solar energy on a large scale requires its storage. In natural photosynthesis, energy from sunlight is used to rearrange the bonds of water to O2 and H2-equivalents. The realization of artificial systems that perform similar "water splitting" requires catalysts that produce O2 from water without the need for excessive driving potentials. Here, we report such a catalyst that forms upon the oxidative polarization of an inert indium tin oxide electrode in phosphate-buffered water containing Co2+. A variety of analytical techniques indicates the presence of phosphate in an approximate 1:2 ratio with cobalt in this material. The pH dependence of the catalytic activity also implicates HPO42– as the proton acceptor in the O2-producing reaction. This catalyst not only forms in situ from earth-abundant materials but also operates in neutral water under ambient conditions.