Boffins boost fuel-cell future with 'nanowire forest'

*efficiently* making Hydrogen is good

But turning the atmosphere's excess CO2 into hydrocarbon fuels is *better*.

Otherwise you're stuck with yet another H2 production route.

Which still leaves you with all the *other* problems of H2 distribution and storage.

Thumbs up for the new option and hopes that they will go with the HC route. But remember folks this is v0.1 tech.

No one's fueling their car by tapping off the H2 from from a solar collector for a *very* long time to come.

@Dave 150

My take on the matter is that this kind of technology is great for anything depending on surface area for the generation of energy and/or useful chemical compounds, as long as the energy cost of creating the nanowires is less than the benefit obtained. Solar cells, hydrogen production, fuel cells, catalysts, ...

Considering the way the efficiency of nanowire creation has been rising in the last decade, I'd bet that these technologies will be very useful in a near future.

The *classic* reply to economists "what good is it?" was given by Michael Farady

Politician "so what good is it (electric current in a wire influencing a compass needle)?"

MF "I don't know, but I guess one day you'll tax it."

And b***er me sideways he was absolutely right.

Let's talk about the process chaps?

This process will use pure water then?

Takes quite a bit of energy to make 100% pure water and keep it that way.

Take sunlight and water with all its life forms and minerals in it and you'll get an algae or bacteria bloom which will clog those nano-tubes in no time flat.

For the AGW sheeple.

<Yawn> OK, just for all the AGW crowd, let's try a little actual science and maths. The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 0.0387% by volume. If it was to increas by "30%" it still only gets to 0.05031, which is still much lower than the levels it has been at many times in the past. AGW bleaters like to focus on the last 100,000 years leading up through the industrial revolution (and it has NOT been static or in equilibrium during that period) as this gives them another nice hockeystick graph known as the Keeling Curve. And we all know how much the AGW crowd love rehashing science and producing misleading hockeystick graphs. The Keeling Curve is an exercise in deceptive mathematical maipulation, using chopped axis and compressed variables in order to get the steep ramp up the AGW sheeple need. Indeed, the levels of C02 have risen and fallen cyclically over millions of years, reaching peaks of over 0.06%, much higher than those bleated by the alarmists.

The other constant bleat from the AGW sheeple is that CO2 is "irreversible", stating that once we have created it by burning fossil fuels we are stuck with it forever. Which neatly ignores the fact that CO2 breakdown is what plants do best seeing as it is the basis of photosynthesis. So, to shut up the sheeple, simply suggest they go plant a few trees, even Cannabis plants if they want to (should keep them doubly quiet).

"The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 0.0387% by volume. If it was to increas by "30%" it still only gets to 0.05031, which is still much lower than the levels it has been at many times in the past."

Please define "in the past". If you mean tens of millions of years ago, then sure.

"AGW bleaters like to focus on the last 100,000 years leading up through the industrial revolution (and it has NOT been static or in equilibrium during that period) as this gives them another nice hockeystick graph known as the Keeling Curve."

Yes, we do like to focus on the last 100,000 years. You know why? Because agriculture has only existed in that period, and is rather finely tuned to the specific set of conditions existing in the present time. Because London, the East Anglia, and, I don't know, Florida have not been underwater in that period. Because most of the species alive on the planet are finely adapted to their current ecological niches and wouldn't survive a sudden shift back to the climate of the cretaceous period.

You seriously don't think it's a problem that we've moved the needle on atmospheric composition (from 300ppm CO2 to 400ppm) by such an amount that you have to go back before humans existed to find a comparable, and we've done that in only fifty years?

Better than trees?

How much more efficient than a willow or miscanthus plantation does this have to be before it makes sense? Is there any hope that it will be? More efficient than PV with car-battery buffering?

Regardless of technical approach -- from biomass up -- the problem with solar energy is that it has to be physically huge (like 2 or 10% of UK's land area, truly impossible numbers) to make sense in the context of national energy demand. This lovely thing can't change the depressing physics of turning visible quanta into usable energy.

Nor is the limited automotive solar/hydrogen concept a runner. It's kept alive by corporate and personal dreamers who want to stick with combustion engines for cars while still sounding green. This research is brilliant -- just imagine a catalytic substrate built like this -- but solar hydrogen isn't.

Hmm.. nano forests

I say grow as many as we can, then chop them down and burn them. Steam power for everyone !

The "tipping point" will be when New Orleans & Miami are *permanently* under water

That's the tipping point in *concern* about AGW, IE when the US *collectively* realizes "OMFG there's a *problem*"

I imagine a fair few bits of uninteresting real estate (to the US that is) will have gone under by then.

Weather it will be too late actually *do* something about it (other than sealing the bottom 10-15 floors of Miami apartment blocks and installing boat docks by their sides) is another matter.