Knowing that a nuclear reactor core meltdown will likely occur once every 10-20 years leaving immeasurable damage in its wake, I see it as nothing short of insane to continue on with business as usual.
Indeed, we have the technology at our disposal, it is only a matter of giving it the necessary attention and funding required to push it to the next level of commercial deployment.
A company out of Santa Barbara, California, HyperSolar, Inc., has developed a new mind bending technology based on combining their polymer coating with a miniscule solar device in order to create a wholly self-contained particle which utilizes solar power to separate hydrogen from almost any water source.
Keep in mind, hydrogen power is widely regarded as one of, if not the most, clean and “green” energy sources on Earth and since almost any water source can be used to produce hydrogen with this technology, it could be as close to “free energy” as we can get.
HyperSolar recently announced that their first proof of concept prototype has already successfully produced renewable hydrogen and in the future it will only get more efficient.
Their low-cost polymer coating is combined with an incredibly small-scale solar device, thus creating a tiny self-contained particle which is then placed in an equally cheap plastic bag and they have already demonstrated that their technology is wholly scientifically valid.
“Using our self-contained particle in a low cost plastic bag, we have successfully demonstrated our ability to mimic photosynthesis to produce renewable hydrogen from virtually any source of water using the power of the Sun,” said Tim Young, HyperSolar’s CEO.
“Unlike approaches taken by others in the past, our small scale solar devices actually float in the water. Our next step is to complete the development of our nanoparticles, extremely small solar devices, optimized to significantly reduce the cost of separating hydrogen from water,” Young added.
That’s right, nanoparticles which are actually solar devices that separate hydrogen from water, even from relatively dirty sources like the pulp and paper mill wastewater used in the proof of concept prototype.
The amazing part of their prototype is that it is actually quite obvious that it works even to the naked, untrained eye. This is because we can see the hydrogen bubbles being created by the self-contained particles in the small bag in the video (shown below):
Now that they know the technology works, the next step is to unveil the nanoparticle-based prototype which could be mass-produced at low enough cost to enable commercial applications.
Furthermore, the nanoparticles can freely float in much larger-scale bag systems in order to create massive quantities of renewable hydrogen, thus indicating that this could be a way to reduce reliance on dirty, dangerous energy sources.
“We believe we are on the right track to produce the lowest cost renewable hydrogen. Most hydrogen used today is not renewable and not very clean because it is produced from finite hydrocarbon sources, such as oil, coal and natural gas,” Young said.
“Renewable hydrogen produced from nearly infinite sources of water and sunlight, is clean and carbon free. The worldwide impact of using renewable hydrogen to generate electricity and power fuel cell vehicles would be extraordinary,” he concluded.
Thankfully, some are realizing the potential of this technology, such as the University of California, Santa Barbara, which recently entered into a year-long sponsored research program with HyperSolar in order to speed up the development of their cutting edge technology.
I truly hope that this will be as successful as it seems it could be and thus help completely eliminate the need for nuclear technology, the dangers of which are far too great to consider an acceptable risk given the options we have at hand.
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