So what would we currently have to do to meet that demand?
- Building a new 1 Billion Watt nuclear plant every 1.6 days till 2050 would yield 8 Terrawatts
- Consuming all the vegetation not used for food to make Biofuels would yield 7 Terrawatts
- Covering every inch of land on the earth with wind turbines would yield 2 Terrawatts
Hhm not much luck with today's Tech
nologies. However MIT's Daniel Nocera believes the solution is the Sun. The Sun beams down approximately 800 Terrawatts on the earth daily. However, our current solar technologies have some issues.
For one the technology is still quite costly. But first and foremost is the storage of energy for evenings and periods of extended cloud cover. Currently it would take approximately 2000lbs of lead batteries to store enough solar energy to power a household for a whole evening. This is where Professor Norcera pulled from the theory of photosynthesis to essentially recreate the process of electrolysis you experimented with in high school which uses electric currents to break down H2O in to Hydrogen and Oxygen. Using this process you can then store the Hydrogen in a fuell cell. However, this process is also expensive and isn't the most efficient, which is where photosynthesis inspired
them. By infusing Cobalt and Potassium Phosphate into the water the process can now be recreated using only a volt of power bringing the storage cost down from thousands of dollars to tens.
So how does it work. Essentially throughout the day Solar panels would power your house and the excess energy would be sent to a small container of water where it would split the oxygen and hydrogen. After the sun goes down the Hydrogen and Oxygen would be re-combined in a fuel cell to power your house, charge your car, etc. There's obviously still a lot of issues to be ironed out , but this sounds like the first truly promising process in while.
If this process proves to be successful this could
nologies. However MIT's Daniel Nocera believes the solution is the Sun. The Sun beams down approximately 800 Terrawatts on the earth daily. However, our current solar technologies have some issues.For one the technology is still quite costly. But first and foremost is the storage of energy for evenings and periods of extended cloud cover. Currently it would take approximately 2000lbs of lead batteries to store enough solar energy to power a household for a whole evening. This is where Professor Norcera pulled from the theory of photosynthesis to essentially recreate the process of electrolysis you experimented with in high school which uses electric currents to break down H2O in to Hydrogen and Oxygen. Using this process you can then store the Hydrogen in a fuell cell. However, this process is also expensive and isn't the most efficient, which is where photosynthesis inspired
them. By infusing Cobalt and Potassium Phosphate into the water the process can now be recreated using only a volt of power bringing the storage cost down from thousands of dollars to tens.So how does it work. Essentially throughout the day Solar panels would power your house and the excess energy would be sent to a small container of water where it would split the oxygen and hydrogen. After the sun goes down the Hydrogen and Oxygen would be re-combined in a fuel cell to power your house, charge your car, etc. There's obviously still a lot of issues to be ironed out , but this sounds like the first truly promising process in while.
If this process proves to be successful this could
- Solve the storage issue as a gallon of water would replace 2000lbs of batteries.
- It could provide decentralize the solar power.
- Would lower the cost.
- Provide a clean form of energy
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