Search results for daniel nocera – The Green Optimistic

Artificial Leaf Generates Hydrogen, Even in Contaminated Water

Benji Jerew — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:07:25 +0000

Daniel Nocera, previously of MIT and now Harvard, once called the artificial leaf “one of the Holy Grails of science,” but what if it was improved even further? In all green trees and plants, photosynthesis uses energy from the sun to split water into oxygen gas and hydrocarbons, that is, sugars which the tree uses […]

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Sun Catalytix’s Grid-Connected Flow Batteries Promise Cheap Energy Storage

Mila Luleva — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:07:32 +0000

Sun Catalytix, a company which spun out of MIT in 2009 to bring a low-cost catalyst to the market, has changed its main goal from enabling the hydrogen economy to designing a flow battery for grid storage. The first prototype is expected later this year. The new flow battery will be made of two custom-designed […]

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Molybdenum-Based Catalyst Discovered as Cheap Alternative to Platinum for Hydrogen Production

Ovidiu Sandru — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:40:29 +0000

There have been many researchers seeking the perfect catalyst for dissociating water into hydrogen and oxygen. Xile Hu and his team from the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) in Switzerland have recently tinkered with a cheap catalyst made from molybdenum.

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Sunengy Signs Contract With Tata Power for Floating Concentrated Solar System

Ovidiu Sandru — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:36:02 +0000

Indian company Tata is getting more and more involved in the renewable energy sector. After the agreement their CEO had with Daniel Nocera for producing energy from water, they now make a deal with Australia-based Sunengy, which manufactures LSAs (Liquid Solar Arrays), basically floating concentrated solar power systems (CSP).

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Leaf-Mimicking Catalyst Inventor Signs Huge Contract With Tata Group for Hydrogen-From-Water Device

Ovidiu Sandru — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 19:31:58 +0000

MIT professor Daniel Nocera, the inventor of a type of electrolysis that mimics the plants photosynthesis, and Ratan Tata, the CEO of the Indian Tata group, have signed a funding agreement allowing the Tata group to commercialize Nocera's invention which produces power from water.

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Tata Using Steel As Substrate For Cheap Solar Cells

Ovidiu Sandru — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 16:15:00 +0000

An economically-sound solution to solar power comes from Tata Steel's Corus and Swansea University researchers, who developed a technology that uses steel sheets for more efficient dye-sensitized solar cells.

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Purification of Hydrogen Extracted from CNG Made More Efficient With New Dispersed Platinum Catalyst

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 10:13:02 +0000

A consortium involving three universities has devised an atomically dispersed platinum catalyst that could be of use in future hydrogen production systems. Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos from Tufts University and Manos Mavrikakis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison published their research in today's Science journal.

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Daniel Nocera's New Catalyst Produces 200 Percent More Efficient Electrolyzers

Mike Sandru — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:13:16 +0000

Scientists have recently discovered that, among other sources, still water can generate renewable energy. Using an electrolyzer, water is broken into hydrogen and oxygen. In this process, catalysts are needed for oxygen production, most of which are not cheap, nor environment-friendly.

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A New Research Center to Develop Methods of Generating Fuel from Sunlight

Mike Sandru — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:07:44 +0000

A new research center in California is about to be established after the U.S. Department of Energy has invested $122 million. Researchers from the new center will try to find ways of generating fuels made by using sunlight. The project will be led by a team of researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Caltech.

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New Catalyst for Electrolysis Reduces Costs by 97% and Increases Hydrogen Production Fourfold

Ovidiu Sandru — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:30:18 +0000

Hydrogen, the cleanest energy storage in the Universe, is most of the time associated with high costs, although it is extracted from water, which is the cheapest yet the most precious element to life. Extracting hydrogen from water is done through a method called electrolysis, but doing electrolysis efficiently requires the usage of catalysts such as platinum, which is very expensive.

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Daniel Nocera Coming Back With Better Material for Splitting Water

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:32:29 +0000

Daniel Nocera, a face we see more and more often on the stage of alternative energy, along with postdoctoral researcher Mircea Dinca and graduate student Yogesh Surendranath, discovered a material that can work efficiently and sustainably as an oxygen electrode for Nocera’s wider research in water splitting by using electricity. This subject has caught a […]

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Pea Plants Providing Inspiration for Artificial Solar Cells

Ovidiu Sandru — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:02:52 +0000

Trying to imitate the plants and the way they produce energy when hit by light, Prof. Nathan Nelson of Tel Aviv University's Department of Biochemistry discovered a complex membrane protein and founded a new model for developing "green energy", having this membrane at its core.

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Artificial Photosynthesis Could Power Homes on a Bottle of Water

Mike Sandru — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:25:40 +0000

MIT chemist Dan Nocera claims that with just one bottle of drinking water and four hours of sunlight, he can generate 30 KWh of electric energy, being enough to power an entire home. This process consist in a a cobalt-based catalyst that uses solar energy to split water and produce hydrogen.

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Astounding Discovery: Marine Algae Using Quantum Mechanics Principles for Light Harvesting

Ovidiu Sandru — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:34:42 +0000

Professor Greg Scholes, the lead author of the study published recently in Nature, says: "There's been a lot of excitement and speculation that nature may be using quantum mechanical practices. Our latest experiments show that normally functioning biological systems have the capacity to use quantum mechanics in order to optimize a process as essential to their survival as photosynthesis."

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Daniel Nocera's Sun Catalytix Receives $7.1 Million for Developing Photosynthesis System

Cristi — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:47:27 +0000

Daniel G. Nocera of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the inventor of the most important solar energy system of the century. His 2007 designed system is able to create cheap solar energy based on the photosynthesis process.

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Hydrogen Produced by Mimicking Photosynthesis

Ovidiu Sandru — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:01:20 +0000

MIT researchers found out a way to create energy by mimicking the photosynthesis process that green plants acquire their energy from. Prof. Daniel G. Nocera and former MIT graduate student Alan F. Heyduk invented a hydrogen-producing compound. They also use a catalyst and small amounts of light.

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