George Rebane
I’ve been an open critic of ARRA ever since it started a year ago. But I do want to report on a possible benefit that may derive out of ARRA funds that are being channeled through the Advanced Research Projects Agency(Energy branch) to Sun Catalytix, a start-up in Massachusetts. Physorg.com reports –
With one bottle of drinking water and four hours of sunlight, MIT chemist Dan Nocera claims that he can produce 30 KWh of electricity, which is enough to power an entire household in the developing world. With about three gallons of river water, he could satisfy the daily energy needs of a large American home.
Using the electricity generated from a 30-square-meter photovoltaic array, Nocera's cobalt-phosphate catalyst converts water and carbon dioxide into hydrogen and oxygen. The process is similar to organic photosynthesis, except that in nature, plants create energy in the form of sugars instead of hydrogen.
The hydrogen produced through artificial photosynthesis can be stored in a tank and later used to produce electricity by being recombined with oxygen in a fuel cell, even when the sun isn't shining. Alternatively, the hydrogen can be converted into a liquid fuel.
With his start-up company, Sun Catalytix, which was awarded $4 million in government funding through the new ARPA-E agency, Nocera hopes to make the system affordable enough to allow individual homes to generate their own fuel and electricity on-site.
There’s an old Estonian saying that even a blind chicken pecking will sooner or later find a seed. If this works, it may be one helluva seed. Here’s an unabashed promo video that’s a little disappointing. If the technology is real, some other stuff could have been shown. But this looks like a government sponsored show n’ tell, and we can all hope for the best.
rebanesruminations.com 
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