Seven years or 70?
A team of
Australian scientists expects their work with titanium oxide ceramics said to
harvest sunlight and split water to produce hydrogen fuel -- to radically change
the world and replace Australia's energy industry.
It will take a simple engineering exercise to
build an energy-harvesting device without moving parts to supply the hydrogen
economy and the team expects the material to build the device to be ready in
seven years.
Rooftop panels placed on 1.6 million homes could
supply Australia's entire energy needs, the team at the University of New South
Wales (USNW) reported.
Titanium dioxide -- the basic building block -- is
plentiful and cheap.
The potential market is huge, "the size of
all the existing markets for coal, oil and gas combined," said Professor
Janusz Nowotny, who with Professor Chris Sorrell leads the solar hydrogen
research project at the UNSW Centre for Materials and Energy Conversion.
The team is thought to be furthest along in
developing the inexpensive, light-sensitive materials.
Australia's in good shape to take advantage of the
discovery thanks to abundant sunlight and titanium reserves and being close to
burgeoning Asia-Pacific energy markets, the team reported.
The University hosted the International Conference
on Materials for Hydrogen Energy with eminent delegates from Japan, Germany, the
US and Australia.
Who's signed on so far?
Titania slag firm Rio Tinto, Austral Bricks hopes
to use the device at remote mining operations in Australia.
Sialon Ceramics wants to produce and market the
solar-hydrogen device.
Offers to get involved came from the US, Europe
and Asian countries including the Resource Policy Institute in Los Angeles, the
team added.
"As sources of fossil fuels disappear, the
race is on to be the world's leading provider of hydrogen," the team
explained.
"The US government recently committed an
extra US$1.2 billion to hydrogen research."
Japan launched a 20-year research program to send
satellites into space to gather solar power and beam it back to earth by laser
into titania cells, the team reported.
"The European Commission has instituted an
intense R&D program in pursuit of solar hydrogen and Iceland aims to be the
world's first hydrogen economy."
Later we asked EPRI's Kurt Yeager his view of the
news and the seven-year forecast.
"More like 70 years," he replied.
Published in Restructuring
Today on August 30, 2004.