New photovoltaic sensor?

[sam17]

I came across an article almost too good to be true!

In fact it is not really photovoltaic solar but a process allowing to separate oxygen from hydrogen from the light of the sun. Combined with a fuel cell, the efficiency would be much higher than traditional photovoltaics.

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/03/a-bottle-of-was.php

[dedeleco]

The problem is the performance of this type of assembly known with a few bubbles like on the photo for a long time and I have huge doubts on the yield, no clear scientific reference, verifiable on a too simple assembly to be true.

Great chance that it is a pumping up of money or subsidy.

The photosynthetic yield of cyanobacteria and plants is quite good, under the right conditions, and very difficult to do better.

The description is very different at MIT:
it is to make an electrolysis with the electricity of usual solar panels or photovoltaic cells of the same type coupled with this catalyst decomposing water at fairly low voltage in excess on that of decomposition of water !!

http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/dgn/www/re ... olar.shtml
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html
http://www.mit.edu/~chemistry/faculty/nocera.html
http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/dgn/www/pu ... 2011.shtml

The catalyst operates at 100 mA / cm2 at 76% efficiency.
the discovery on an inexpensive H2 producing catalyst that operates at 1000 mA / cm2 at 35 mV overpotential.

These catalyst discoveries have enabled the construction of inexpensive water splitting devices that may be coupled to either a photovoltaic panel or coupled directly to the surface of a semiconducting substrate (thus eliminating the module costs associated with a photovoltaic panel).

So no better yield than that of photovoltaic cells storing in batteries !!
Only better electrolysis with less losses.

However, this catalyst is a good result.