Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
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Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#2Key facts:
> In fact, he said, the new catalyst is 1,000 times faster than noble-metal catalysts — and about 20 times cheaper.
> The combination of water and the ionic liquid makes a co-catalyst that preserves the catalyst’s active sites under the harsh reduction reaction conditions,
No mention of efficiency compared to photovoltaic cells.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#3Key facts: > In fact, he said, the new catalyst is 1,000 times faster than noble-metal catalysts — and about 20 times cheaper. > The combination of water and the ionic liquid makes a co-catalyst that preserves the catalyst’s active sites under the harsh reduction reaction conditions, No mention of efficiency compared to photovoltaic cells.
There are some efficiency numbers in the abstract of the "Nanostructured transition metal dichalcogenide electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction in ionic liquid." article:
Conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) into fuels is an attractive solution to many energy and environmental challenges. However, the chemical inertness of CO2 renders many electrochemical and photochemical conversion processes inefficient. We report a transition metal dichalcogenide nanoarchitecture for catalytic electrochemical CO2 conversion to carbon monoxide (CO) in an ionic liquid. We found that tungsten diselenide nanoflakes show a current density of 18.95 milliamperes per square centimeter, CO faradaic efficiency of 24%, and CO formation turnover frequency of 0.28 per second at a low overpotential of 54 millivolts. We also applied this catalyst in a light-harvesting artificial leaf platform that concurrently oxidized water in the absence of any external potential.
Copyright © 2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#4Key facts: > In fact, he said, the new catalyst is 1,000 times faster than noble-metal catalysts — and about 20 times cheaper. > The combination of water and the ionic liquid makes a co-catalyst that preserves the catalyst’s active sites under the harsh reduction reaction conditions, No mention of efficiency compared to photovoltaic cells.
I'm more interested with comparison to plants harvested for biodiesel.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#5In addition to lack of performance numbers, they misstate the amount of sunlight hitting earth by a factor of 10- it's supposed to be 1000 W/m2, not 100.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#6paper: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6298/467 (paywall), but it's available on sci-hub.cc
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#7[deleted]
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#8paper: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6298/467 (paywall), but it's available on sci-hub.cc
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#9This is wonderful!
We're surrounded by life forms that turn water, CO2 and sunlight into energy. I figure there must be some way to harness this process.
I wonder how much power a large tree takes in from its leaves. If we could interface with its root system, perhaps we could extract newly created starch, and either store it or burn it off.
Image a huge concrete power plant with large trees growing out of it.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#10In addition to lack of performance numbers, they misstate the amount of sunlight hitting earth by a factor of 10- it's supposed to be 1000 W/m2, not 100.
100w is closer to reality for most places. 1000W per meter squared is an ideal case for some near-equatorual desert at noon with very clean air.