Eco Factor: Artificial plant generates hydrogen and releases oxygen.
Energy is hard to come by, and the way our 21st century lifestyles have emerged, the scarce reserves of fuel are bound to go extinct in a few decades. Scientists and researches are battling hard to find new ways to sustain our modern lifestyle with fuel sources that are high in efficiency and low on pollution. While hydrogen fuel cells show a promising future, generating and transporting hydrogen proves no less than a nightmare for the environment. A team of four product designers - Cao Tauei, One Ruina, Chonran Li and Li Tsobin, have come up with a solution they call “E-Growing.”
Trying to bring the designs of nature into a more scientific form, they have designed a synthetic lotus plant with rubber petals and solar-paneled leaves to generate hydrogen and release oxygen into the atmosphere. The solar panels generate a small amount of current, which carries out electrolysis in water, separating oxygen and hydrogen molecules in water. While oxygen is released into the atmosphere by the plant’s stamen, hydrogen is compressed and stored in a can lined with carbon nanotubes.
The petals of the plant are designed in a way that they open up at sunrise and close at sunset. The hydrogen collecting can store hydrogen at a pressure of 2-3atm. The cans also have a relieve valve as a safety feature. The plant is designed to be planted in a pool just like an ordinary plant, allowing users to generate hydrogen for all their energy needs.
The Dark Side:
The concept shows that there is no shortage of energy sources and what’s actually needed is some innovative minds to harness sources never thought of before. However, without any details of what anode and cathode would be used to electrolyze water, we sincerely feel that the plant won’t be able to generate enough hydrogen to power a fuel-cell car or light up a home in the evening.
Via: JDF
If we stick this hard-earned H2 into our conventional piston engines, as morons are wont to do, we will be sorely disappointed! We will never run the ever popular Corvette with this fuel! WE have to change! WE have to realize realistic needs, before Mother nature tires of us entirely and sweeps us out of her world! If we power steel railed utra-light trains, for people who have reasonable body weights, the equation changes! As the oil runs out, and we return to a more normalize set of needs, as the pressure from the (GRD) great republican depression forces our wills and molds our minds, Mother Nature’s will is met, and life as we have never known it will go on - Unamerican, perhaps by today’s standards, but it is these very standards that are being morphed and the consequential paradigm shifts will define the new American realities, sans Corvettes, sans McMansions and sans overindulgences practiced by oil users the world over!
I love a cool green invention as much as the next guy, but I feel compelled to respectfully point out how incredibly inefficient this thing is.
The design generates current produced by its solar panels to electrolyze water into it’s component hydrogen and two oxygen molecules. But electrolysis has a practical efficiency-the amount of electrical energy you put in versus the amount of chemical hydrogen energy you get out-of maybe 50%. So of the power generated by the solar panels on this rig, only 50% of it, if you’re very, very lucky, will be turned into usable hydrogen energy. Then, because the hydrogen is so light, it must then be compressed to a remotely usable energy density (Like 200-700 psi. This unit compresses hydrogen to 2-3 atm which is 30-45 psi), which takes even more energy. A lot more. Then, to run a car, or light or anything else, this compressed hydrogen would have to pass through a hydrogen fuel cell, which would combine the the hydrogen with atmospheric oxygen to create electricity. Say you were using it to power a car. In practice, according to wikipedia, ”Fuel cell vehicles running on compressed hydrogen may have a power-plant-to-wheel efficiency of 22%” so now, at best, we’re talking 11% of the original energy captured by the solar panels, 100% of which could have been used to charge a battery. A NiMH battery has roughly 50x the energy density of uncompressed hydrogen. And it would have used no water, and required no ”maturing” of fuel cell cars, or any other specialized gadget that doesn’t exist yet and doesn’t need to.
I don’t mean to be condescending or rude, but as a proponent of Eco-tech I feel it’s my responsibility to point out pointless greenwashing. The war is on for our green minds, and if we are not educated about it, we will be sold things we don’t need. This thing is like using a solar oven to boil water to produce steam to run a generator to power an electric oven.
Nature’s will is met, and life as we have never known it will go on - Unamerican, perhaps by today’s standards, but it is these very standards that are being morphed and the consequential paradigm shifts will define the new American realities, sans Corvettes, sans McMansions and sans overindulgences practiced by oil users the world over!
Thanks for sharing solar information
