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| Down Under |
| Crystal brings solar energy closer |
| 2008-05-28 |
| AFFORDABLE solar energy for every household has moved closer to reality thanks to a ground-breaking discovery at the University of Queensland (UQ). Professor Max Lu, from UQ's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, said researchers were one step closer to the holy grail of cost-effective solar energy. "We have grown the world's first titanium oxide single crystals with large amounts of reactive surfaces, something that was predicted as almost impossible," Professor Lu said. "The crystals absorb sunlight and convert it into electricity." Prof Lu, who has been working on the project for the past 15 years, said the crystals were a cheaper alternative to solar panels. He expects it to take up to 10 years for the technology to be commercially available. Prof Lu said the crystals could also be used to purify air and water, and expected that to take about five years to commercialise. The work was the result of a long-term international collaboration with Professor Hui-Ming Cheng's group from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #3 Titanium is currently $5 per pound. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2008-05-28 21:59 |
| #2 And where is all this Ti going to come from? We may well have to wait until they find a substitute for it. |
| Posted by: gorb 2008-05-28 15:23 |
| #1 The way this technology seems to be developing points to an interesting conclusion: Multiple Marginal Use. That is, the technologies take care of *some* of people's high end needs, supplementary to existing technology. For example, solar cells that in winter are used mostly to light your house, and maybe raise the temperature of the house by 20 degrees--thus reducing, but not eliminating the need for home heating oil considerably. In summer, just the opposite, cooling the crawlspace by 20 degrees turns hot to very warm, but really reduces the load on the house A/C. Another example is nanotechnology low energy water purifiers, that will produce water so pure that a bit a sea salt is added to replace trace minerals. But it only does so for drinking water--the rest of the house water is city water. But it saves a fortune in buying bottled water. Another example is a large algae tank that produces algae-vegetable oil, that is mixed with ethanol and sodium hydrochloride (lye), or some other process, to make biodiesel. Not enough for all your needs, but which can be mixed with gas station petroleum diesel to take a dollar a gallon off its pump price. In each of these cases, by taking a little bit off the top, the marginal use, they can save lots of money. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-05-28 14:10 |