Friday, June 10, 2011

MIT really can fuel your car with water.

I remember hearing an odd story as a teenager about a man that had invented a process to power his vehicle using nothing but water, and I thought that it was the most ridiculous idea that I had ever heard of. Now perhaps that was a prejudice that I had had impressed upon me by a fossil fuel industry that was desperately holding onto its market share for as long as possible. Well it appears that MIT has now developed a solar cell that uses the naturally occurring photosynthetic process that leaves do, to split water into its two naturally occurring components of oxygen and hydrogen. If you think that I'm using that "naturally occurring" phrase a bit much, I assure you that it is with poetic license. Those two gases, one of which is used as a fuel in Hydrogen fuel cells and has been much sought after and studied as a source of energy; occur naturally but not inexpensively. Various methods of releasing those components of water into an easily collectible form have been developed, but until now the fuel needed to produce the product has been more costly than the return on the investment. Now with the advent of the manufacturing process that uses the passive power of the sun, free; we have a system of manufacturing this greatly desired fuel for pennies; and the ROI is extremely high. To use a coined phrase, I'm gelling. I'm running in the Boston marathon next year and I'm going to drive out of Massachusetts with my first tank of Solar Cell produced Hydrogen Fuel and I'll be counting the minutes that it takes me to give those hydrogens back the the environment in which they naturally occur. 

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