'Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution

[kabin]

Very cool indeed! They've been talking about this approach for years. Glad to hear it looks promising after all.

[NeoPrius]

Originally Posted by Godiva

(the) guy said he was releasing the information as open source so others could use it for development too.

...MIT has taken a patent on developing the means for doing it. Open and a patent. Not sure how that works.

This is really exciting stuff. Maybe MIT is patenting it before anyone else so they can release it open source for the betterment of mankind.

No, I don't think so... more likely the poor scientist will have an unfortunate car accident , MIT will receive large cash infusions from anonymous donors, and the technology will downplayed and quietly swept under the rug. Oil prices will continue to rise...

[PriusSport]

Well, they are going to have to make taking oil out of the ground a primitive concept to save the planet (sorry-oil companies). Maybe this one will be cheap and simple enough to do it--using just water and solar energy. It's too bad too many politicians are thinking as much about how to save the oil and car companies as how to save the planet. Now there's a rub.

[FL_Prius_Driver]

Originally Posted by NeoPrius

This is really exciting stuff. Maybe MIT is patenting it before anyone else so they can release it open source for the betterment of mankind.

Their report is quite detailed on exactly how to do what they did. No secrets kept here, now the world knows the details. The real key is an anode of Indium Tin Oxide. This allowed using disolved cobalt and potassium phosphate in the electrolyte.

Remember when high temp superconductors were the scientific rage. The recipe there was reported to the world. High Schools were even making superconductors from this writeups. (But large scale use was decades in coming.)

When snake oil is a Prius Chat weekly topic, this looks to be the real deal on something useful. I went in somewhat skeptical and have returned encouraged.

[MikeSF]

Originally Posted by NeoPrius

This is really exciting stuff. Maybe MIT is patenting it before anyone else so they can release it open source for the betterment of mankind.

MIT (or any other school) owns the rights to anything discovered by people working for or under them. It's a fact of life, now usually if there's some sort of financial gain those who discovered it (maybe some poor grad student) might get a percentage of the cash (depends how nice the school is). As for the betterment of mankind, they're not suppressing the knowledge, simply saying if you want to profit from it, you need to pay us for it first.

[abq sfr]

The big hurdle here is getting DISTILLED water to use in the device. I can foresee minerals in the water causing all sorts of problems. Distilling the water might cost more energy than the device will produce!

[FL_Prius_Driver]

Originally Posted by abq sfr

The big hurdle here is getting DISTILLED water to use in the device. I can foresee minerals in the water causing all sorts of problems. Distilling the water might cost more energy than the device will produce!

You are overlooking the big picture. The distilled water would come from the Hydrogen and Oxygen being recombined in the large scale energy storage applications envisioned. That would be a pure as you could get. The device does not produce any energy, it takes in electricity to perform electroysis. Any large scale use of this will have parasitic loads, of which purification would be one....but not a major one.

Making large volumes of pure water is rather efficient, so the volumes needed for electroysis are miniscule when looked at what is made with present day plants for city water supplies. When running power plants (especially nuclear plants), supplying pure water (much purer than distilled) is a very efficient operation with a very small parasitic load.

[hill]

Originally Posted by darelldd

Normally these break-through solar discoveries are followed by promises of taking over the world in just a couple of years. The industry will be revolutionized! And so far, I can count the number of times that the "big breakthrough" has commercialized on... well, NO fingers. This one guesses it'll be ready in 10 years. If you research enough, you'll find these major breakthroughs announced several times per year. Sadly, not ONE of them has turned the corner into commercialization. Turns out that we can do all kinds of neat things in the lab. Putting it on our roofs is a different story.

Still... it is nice to dream. And there's no telling. One day it could happen, and all our energy worries will be over.

Look at nanosolar ... THEY'VE already made their breakthrough, with thinfilm ... now in production as of this year at a way cheeper cost than traditional solar. But Bush, Chevron, Shell, BP & the rest of the oilie power lobby are set to kill all incentives for solar by the end of this year, here in the U.S.. Thus, nanosolar's entire production is going to Germany, rather than the U.S.. So even when we find a cheeper way, the petro power dollar really dis-incentivies it.

[Godiva]

Wait. Be patient.

BTW the government can suspend patents in a time of crisis. I believe they did it during WWII. So if anyone is sitting on a certain technology (like batteries) to the detriment of the current economic crisis....the government can suspend their patent monopoly and open that up.

That's what *I'd* do if *I* were Supreme Dictator of the Universe for Life.

[MikeSF]

Originally Posted by hill

Look at nanosolar ... THEY'VE already made their breakthrough, with thinfilm ... now in production as of this year at a way cheeper cost than traditional solar. But Bush, Chevron, Shell, BP & the rest of the oilie power lobby are set to kill all incentives for solar by the end of this year, here in the U.S.. Thus, nanosolar's entire production is going to Germany, rather than the U.S.. So even when we find a cheeper way, the petro power dollar really dis-incentivies it.

You're acting like they have products available for the consumers. No need to get all political on us here. Nanosolar had their breakthrough many years ago, it's taken them this long just to get to the point of making large scale solar projects, not stick on your roof kind. Their entire production isn't going to Germany, they built a plant in Germany to build them as well as the US. So keep your panties on and wait until they actually have products that can serve the individual before you start pointing fingers at Bush & Oil companies, the fact is if they had products that they claim ($1 per watt) you wouldn't need subsidies.