http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/28/artificial-leaf
"With a single gallon of water, Nocera says, the chip could produce enough electricity to power a house in a developing country for an entire day. Provide every house on the planet with an artificial leaf and we could satisfy our 14 terrawatt need with just one gallon of water a day."

Lousy first world country!

LMAO...this should go on whitewhine.com. It's priceless.

With RFM, who needs Slashdot?

http://solarpower.com/blog/mits-artificial-leaf-transforms-sunlight-into-storable-fuel/

>Commercial production of the ‘artificial leaf’ is still not on the cards as systems to collect, store and use the gases are yet to be developed.

That was my reaction when I first read the article; how are they going to compress and store the oxygent and hydrogen produced? The laws of thermodynamics (and I'm not a physicist, of course, but if I'm wrong one of the board's "Jesuses" will correct me) suggest that a fair amount of energy would be required in order to accomplish this, and much of that energy would be lost as heat. So it's difficult to visualize this one being a viable alternative energy option.

But hey, it sounds sexy, so let's publish the story...

I'm not a big Nader fan, be he does have some good things to say. One such thing was that solar energy wouldn't make any real progress until the energy corporations could acquire exclusive rights to the sun. In other words, there has to be a shitload of money in it. So, if ever there were a miracle energy-producing artificial leaf, it wouldn't be cheap. It would probably sell for about the same price as the cost of producing the same amount of energy a conventional way, because Business 101 says to never leave money on the table.

People in the early 19th Century at least had the excuse they didn't know better.. Sorry, I worked way late last night, and the brain was toast until I got some sleep...

>MIT professor Daniel Nocera claims to have created an artificial leaf, made from stable and inexpensive materials, which mimics nature's photosynthesis process.

>photo•syn•the•sis n. The process a plant uses to combine sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen and sugar (energy).

https://www4.uwsp.edu/natres/nres743/Definitions/Photosynthesis.htm

This is nothing more than a bit of sophistry using a solar cell to replicate the old 8th grade science experiment where one uses a dry cell and electrodes in water to separate H20 into its component atoms. At best it's a "catalytic" operation, and hydrogen fuel cells operate on a catalyic principle where hydrogen and oxygen are passed over a platinum grid and combine to form water and electricity...

But hey, it must be true. It's on the Internet... Okay, I see two of the replies have things doped out, Simon and Marco, and somebody else is insisting it's a "chemical reaction" which is bogus...

And now I see this is from last March... Three days before the first day of April... Methinks there's a connection...



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2011 12:08PM by SL Cabbie.

SL Cabbie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> People in the early 19th Century at least had the
> excuse they didn't know better.. Sorry, I worked
> way late last night, and the brain was toast until
> I got some sleep...
>
> >MIT professor Daniel Nocera claims to have
> created an artificial leaf, made from stable and
> inexpensive materials, which mimics nature's
> photosynthesis process.
>
> >photo•syn•the•sis n. The process a plant
> uses to combine sunlight, water, and carbon
> dioxide to produce oxygen and sugar (energy).
>
> https://www4.uwsp.edu/natres/nres743/Definitions/P
> hotosynthesis.htm
>
> This is nothing more than a bit of sophistry using
> a solar cell to replicate the old 8th grade
> science experiment where one uses a dry cell and
> electrodes in water to separate H20 into its
> component atoms. At best it's a "catalytic"
> operation, and hydrogen fuel cells operate on a
> catyltic principle where hydrogen and oxygen are
> passed over a platinum grid and combine to form
> water and electricity...
>
> But hey, it must be true. It's on the Internet...
> Okay, I see two of the replies have things doped
> out, Simon and Marco, and somebody else is
> insisting it's a "chemical reaction" which is
> bogus...
>
> And now I see this is from last March... Three
> days before the first day of April... Methinks
> there's a connection...


Cabbie, I believe you are spot on with this. I never saw any technical reports or journal articles on anything like this. It's likely a hoax.

Thanks, my friend; MIT (which has left me underwhelmed for years now) is mentioning this one, but the original story broke, as I noted, in March, and finally in the fall we're hearing more...

http://web.mit.edu/press/2011/artificial-leaf.html

If relations between the press and the scientific community are so bad that this has to be described as "photosynthesis" rather than the far more accurate term, "electrolysis," there's a big disconnect that is deplorable...

A couple of more links (I'm still searching for the one I read yesterday afternoon).

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/03/green-machine.html

http://truth11.com/2011/07/13/leaf-mimicking-catalyst-inventor-signs-huge-contract-with-tata-group-for-hydrogen-from-water-device/

http://www.kurzweilai.net/artificial-leaf-could-power-a-home-mit-scientist

A couple of responders on this bulletin board seem to see things the way I do. Full marks to them for figuring things out more quickly than my middle-aged brain, but I'll still challenge 'em to navigate a tricky course across town in the shortest time period and least distance...

http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/boards/renewables/mit-researcher-unveils-solar-artificial-leaf/