Sharjah24 – Reuters: An artificial leaf that creates hydrogen out of thin air, water and sunshine, could be a long term solution to renewable energy storage, according to scientists in Switzerland.
This artificial leaf creates hydrogen out of thin air, water and sunshine
“We've invented a device that can take water from humid air and sunlight and convert it into hydrogen which can be used as a fuel or a chemical feedstock for a future energy system based fully on renewable energy. This is really important because there's really a lot of sunlight available, but the sun doesn't shine all the time. So we need a way to store the sunlight for future use, and using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, storing the sunlight in the form of hydrogen is a leading method to do this.” Kevin Sivula, Chemical engineer at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, said.
The scientists were inspired by the way real leaves work
"Natural photosynthesis occurs by taking carbon dioxide from the air, together with sunlight, and produces sugar, effectively storing the sun's light in a chemical form. Well, we wanted to do the same thing, take sunlight and water from the air and store that sunlight energy in the form of hydrogen.”
The device is made from melted glass fibers coated in a semi-conducting material
The next step is to optimize the device's mechanics and efficiency
"In the future if we're successful to find a system with a high enough solar to hydrogen conversion efficiency and good enough stability, we can imagine these artificial leaf-based systems, both in arid environments like the desert where there's not a lot of liquid water, but also in more humid environments."
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