Daniel Nocera's artificial leaf?

[quarky]

The May 14th issue of The New Yorker magazine has 3 very interesting articles.
One, by David Owen, describes the work of Daniel Nocera, and his work on a new approach to electrolysis, with a boron catalyst.

Its a lot like a pv panel, except it stashes H2 instead of charging a battery, and is evidently quite a bit more efficient. I'm having trouble linking to it, but I'll be back to try again.
Meanwhile, have any of you familiarity with this approach to storing energy?

The scientist (D.N.) took pains to not paint a panacea of cheap power, which was nice. Anyway, pretty neat stuff. Sorry about the linky.

 

[Cuddles]

One, by David Owen, describes the work of Daniel Nocera, and his work on a new approach to electrolysis, with a boron catalyst.

This would be the paper the report is based on. Interesting stuff.

Its a lot like a pv panel, except it stashes H2 instead of charging a battery, and is evidently quite a bit more efficient.

Not quite. It actually is a photovoltaic cell, just with some tricks so the energy produced goes straight to the electrolysis rather than output as electricity first. In the section "Triple Junction Wireless Cell: The Artificial Leaf" near the end, it notes that overall efficiency is the efficiency of the photovoltaic multiplied by the efficiency of the electrolysis process, so this device could never be more efficient than a pure PV cell.

The advantage is instead that it's a simple, self-contained unit that directly produces hydrogen fuel. From the conclusion:

The artificial leaf described here, as a simple, stand-alone device composed of earth-abundant materials, provides a first step down a path aligned with the low-cost systems engineering and manufacturing that is required for inexpensive solar-to-fuels systems.

 

[quarky]

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/artificial-leaf-0930.html

That should help. Sorry for the delay.