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by sirdogealot 4321 days ago
This isn't news.

"The researchers also plan to develop a water splitter than runs on electricity produced by solar energy."

Unfortunately that approach would be less efficient that simply transferring the electrical energy to an electric motor.

Light > Electricity > Hydrogen > Electricity > Electric Motor

is longer than

Light > Electricity > Electric Motor
3 comments
nardi 4321 days ago
Ignorance. The news here isn't "we discovered electrolysis!" It's "we developed a new, efficient, and cheap electrocatalyst!"

Did you do that when you were 9 too?

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jacquesm 4321 days ago
Actually, the kids chemistry book that I read as a 10 year old or so had a very clear picture in it of one of the electrodes made of a guilder (dutch coin at the time) and noted it worked better than other coins because of its high nickel content.

That may have been coincidence but it certainly wasn't new knowledge to me that Nickel works well as an electrode when splitting water in Hydrogen and Oxygen.

I wished I'd kept my books from childhood and I'd be able to show you. It wasn't a particular fancy set either, just a bunch of test tubes, some leads to attach to a 4.5 V flat battery (I haven't seen those in ages either) and a bunch of basic chemicals.

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lutorm 4321 days ago
We must have had a similar childhood! :-)
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kstenerud 4321 days ago
For a motor vehicle, you need Energy > Storage > Motor, so Light > Electricity > Electric Motor won't work in this case.
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kazinator 4321 days ago
Efficiency isn't everything. If you want to transfer solar energy directly to a mobile motor, such as one which moves a car, the solar cells to do that have to be mounted on that car, oops! How big is that?

Using non-mobile solar cells to produce an energy-dense fuel which is portable makes sense, even if there is an efficiency hit.

Cars themselves are not efficient no matter how they are powered, because utmost efficiency in a car means lying on your back in a narrow, feather-weight, fragile aerodynamic tube with wheels, going about 25 mph max, and taking minutes to get to that speed. Forget niceties like air conditioning.

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