Splitting Water

The holy grail of green energy. Taking plain old water and separating it into hydrogen and oxygen to use as a fuel.

From high school, you will remember that by running an electric current through the water, you can split the water into its two components. The only problem is it takes more energy to split the water then you get from the hydrogen when burned. Example, if you use 10 units of energy to split water, the resulting hydrogen will only return 8 units of energy.

But plants do just that and they do it efficiently or they wouldn't be able to grow and provide food for us if it took more energy to break down water to its basic elements. The secrete of plants? They use the sun. We humans cannot utilize the sun as an energy source as efficiently as plant do. Our best solar cells are only 6% efficient, or for every 100 units of sun light that hits the cell, only 6 units of electricity are produced.

Researchers have been looking at how plants use the sun to break down water and think they now have a better understanding on the mechanics, to the point they can start thinking how we can duplicate it. If they can, the transformation from a petroleum to a hydrogen economy will come sooner then later. Oh, and water vapor is a greater green house gas then carbon dioxide, but we will worry about that later, after all, it wasn't so long ago folks were worried about global cooling and the coming ice age.

Hat tip Lucianne.