To enjoy the sun as the dominant source of energy storage technology to sustainable development. One promising area of research is to mimic the photosynthesis process of separating hydrogen and oxygen in the water in the form of hydrogen. MIT team, led by Daniel Nocera is now reporting that nickel may Borat efficient and sustainable use of oxygen for the production of electrodes in the process, and systems are for the storage of energy that will allow construction to be completely independent and self-sufficient.

How many people, Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and a professor of chemistry at MIT, believes that solar energy is the only possible way to satisfy the world’s growing demand for energy. Therefore, his research focuses on the development of effective means for splitting water using electricity, which could form the basis of a new energy storage systems. The system uses energy sources such as wind or sun intermittently to create hydrogen fuel, which can be used in fuel cells or other device to generate electricity or transport fuels, as necessary.

Nocera images small systems, where solar panels for electricity on the roof of the house and the surplus will go to the electrolitzador to produce hydrogen, which will be stored in tanks. Although it takes more energy to fuel hydrogen fuel cells, where it joins with oxygen in the air as water and electricity at the same time.

For these systems to be sustainable, must be cheap and reliable. Therefore, Nocera will focus on developing cheaper, more durable electrode material as used in devices that use electricity to separate hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water molecules.

Now, along with postdoctoral researcher undergraduate Mircea Dincer, Yogesh Surendranath, who reported the discovery of additional material that can be effective and sustainable use as an electrode that produces oxygen. This time the material is nickel Borat, from materials that are still abundant and cheap, before cobalt-based electrodes.

Maybe most importantly, Nocera said the new findings show that the circuit is not only original materials, anomalous, and suggests that there might be a whole family of compounds that scientists can study in search of someone who has the best combination technology to offer features wide, long-term energy storage.

“Sometimes when you do something and only do it once,” said Nocera, “you know – is extraordinary or unusual, or can be normal?” In this case, the new material, maintaining all the requirements to be cheap and easy to manufacture, which were found in the cobalt-based electrodes, he says, “but with different metals, which is even cheaper than cobalt. ”

However, research is still at an early stage. “This is the first game,” said Nocera. “Now we know what works in terms of chemistry. One of the important things and will continue to modify the system to make it go faster and better. Put door to travel faster technology.” While the two compounds discovered so far work well, says that he was convinced that further research is carried out even better connections come to light. “I think we found the silver bullet,” he says.

John Turner, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, says a good result, but says there are already commercial electrolitzador, which have better performance than the new version of the laboratory. “The question is under what conditions, this system offers several advantages over existing business systems,” he says. For a large deployment of fuel for the production of solar energy systems, says, “large commercial electrolitzador used by the concentrated alkaline electrolyte, which is fine in the industrial environment, engineers know how to handle some things but when we are talking thousands of square kilometers of solar fields cutting and the individual trade, then the choice of electrolytes, such as benign Borat may be a viable solution. ”

The original discovery has led to the formation of a company called Sun Catalytix, the goal is to commercialize the system in two years. Latest research results were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).