Water splitter runs on an ordinary AAA battery

Lynx

Re: Water splitter runs on an ordinary AAA battery
« Reply #1, on August 22nd, 2014, 11:35 PM »
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Hongjie Dai and colleagues have developed a cheap, emissions-free device that uses a 1.5-volt battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen gas could be used to power fuel cells in zero-emissions vehicles.
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Fuel cell technology is essentially water splitting in reverse. A fuel cell combines stored hydrogen gas with oxygen from the air to produce electricity, which powers the car
I guess these brave gentlemen haven't thought things through enough to realize that in this case they would be better off using the batteries to power the car directly as opposed to having parts of the electric energy go to waste through the electrolysis and the fuel cell processes.
Same for using solar energy, as is mentioned a little further down on that page, skipping the electrolysis & fuel cell stages altogether would in fact prove to be a more efficient way to go here.
Good to see though that water electrolysis is in fact on the agenda at Stanford University, let's hope more universities follows suit.

Enrg4life

Re: Water splitter runs on an ordinary AAA battery
« Reply #2, on August 24th, 2014, 08:13 AM »
I think it is great that they have discovered a way to split the water molecule at that voltage level with out using precious metals. That in it self can open up many doors for better ways to power our world cleanly. It is not difficult to harness 1.5v from our environment.