Making Hydrogen and Electricity from Solar Energy in one Step

I'm a big fan of advancements in energy production, maybe because I spend most of my time in front of the computer, using a variety of devices and traveling.  I think most of us think about our energy consumption frequently because it's all around us.  We always have a reminder of this need when we pay our monthly bills or run close to being out of gas.

If we look into the future, it looks like we'll be running way more equipment on electricity, vehicles in particular.  Elon Musk and Tesla even recently presented their electric heavy transport vehicle to the public about a week ago.  Several car manufacturers are also experimenting with the release and sale of a few hydrogen-based vehicles.

The trend seems to show we'll be using more electricity and less gasoline.

Best however, would be for us to use more hydrogen as a power source for 2 reasons:

1. We would still be using combustion engines so not as much would change.
2. Burning hydrogen makes only pure water.

The main issue with hydrogen as an energy source is that it currently takes more non-renewable energy to make the hydrogen than what you get in the product.  

Many groups have been doing great work at making it less costly through the use of catalysts or specialized electrodes though, which is good.  Some groups have been experimenting with solar energy instead of electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas, which is great because solar is indeed renewable and clean.

One particular group was able to bring the solar to hydrogen electricity to 30% by using composite electrodes.  The electrodes however contain Gallium, which is expensive and polluting.

Others have been making efforts to simply separate the hydrogen from the rest of the water (or methane compound) by using a specialized filter, typically also made out of Gallium and/or Palladium, to some success.  No sun needed, but the liquid metals needed are still pretty bad for the environment.

One awesome group have been doing quite well by using photosensitive protein enveloped in a bi-lipid layer along with some platinum, a titanium dioxide catalyst, and light, to get hydrogen gas.  This one uses metals that are much cheaper and less polluting than others.  

Can we do better?  I discuss the following solutions further in the video below:

One group out of the U.S. Aberdeen Proving Ground Research Laboratory made a discovery (by mistake) that a certain aluminum allow, when in direct contact with water at room temperature, produced copious amounts of hydrogen gas, until the alloy was completely consumed.  This is without light or any energy source.  Just spontaneous.  Now this is interesting because the resulting aluminum can be recovered and you have a disposable hydrogen battery right there that can be used to power specialized equipment in a pinch.

But the best I've found so far is from UCLA researchers.  They've apparently devised a device that can convert solar energy into both hydrogen gas and electricity when water is filtered through.  The device is a combination super-capacitor and hydrogen fuel cell.   Contrary to the other examples mentioned above, the device only uses very common metals like cobalt, nickel and iron, which makes it cheaper and more environmentally friendly.  

This is a very sexy device because cost is always a problem for hydrogen production and having a fuel cell concept, it means that hydrogen can be stored until it is needed and in the meantime, the device is producing electricity from light directly.  

Bottom line we probably need both hydrogen and electricity to run our devices cleanly and cheaply in the future.  Electricity is very useful for constant work but hydrogen can give way more power when you need it most.  It is for this reason why hybrid cars use their combustion engine more when accelerating.  There is just more power in explosions than in electric potential.

On other another note, clever engineers have also designed devices that can create electricity for very specific applications where you just can't have explosions (hydrogen or otherwise) going on or where you just can't have enough surface area to have light convert to electricity or where light isn't always in play.

One of the advancements I really like is this device from Seoul that can use heat differentials at a small scale to generate electricity.  Great to run wearable devices on clothing.  This has been done before, but this one in particular can make electricity from temperature differences as high as 20.9 degrees Celcius.  The more temperature difference, the more juice you can get out of it per square centimeter.

This last one of interest I think has great future for tiny devices such as nanorobots:  making small infinite amounts of electricity from the natural molecular movement of graphene between two electrodes.  The team working on this at the University of Arkansas have tested the concept and it would be enough to run watches forever (same as quartz concepts).  This is not useful to produce energy for a home, but anything that needs tiny amounts of electricity could use this without need for batteries, or quartz crystals, which is tremendously advantageous.

As we find better cleverer ways to generate high value energy at lower cash and environmental costs, we'll gradually change our infrastructures to match.  It is all in the hands of the entrepreneurs to make the move using the research done on materials and devices mentioned above.  The consumers are ready to move away from fossil fuels as long as it doesn't affect their wallets negatively.

I think we're in a nice place to see very positive innovations in the next few years in renewable energies (beyond solar power, which is still extremely interesting and positive).