EPFL scientists are producing hydrogen from sunlight, water
and rust. They’re paving the way for an economic and ecological solution for
storing renewable energy.
How can solar energy be stored so that it can be available
any time, day or night, when the sun shining or not? EPFL scientists are
developing a technology that can transform light energy into a clean fuel that
has a neutral carbon footprint: hydrogen. The basic ingredients of the recipe
are water and metal oxides, such as iron oxide, better known as rust. Kevin
Sivula and his colleagues purposefully limited themselves to inexpensive
materials and easily scalable production processes in order to enable an economically
viable method for solar hydrogen production. The device, still in the
experimental stages, is described in an article published in the journal Nature
Photonics.