Audio Transcript:
The Next Best Thing to Bottled Sunshine. (SOUND EFFECT: cork pops!)
I'm Bob Karson with the discovery files -- new advances in science and engineering from the National Science Foundation.
Our energy future may have just gotten a major surge (SOUND EFFECT: electrical surge sound) with the discovery of a new, amazingly simple process out of MIT. It's about a catalyst that's causing quite a reaction.
MIT chemist Daniel Nocera:
(Nocera): "...There's a lesson to be learned from nature -- there's all those little green things out there called leaves on plants. They store energy all the time, because they need to live when the sun's not out. And the way they do they do it in photosynthesis. Photosynthesis works directly on water -- takes the light, converts it, it takes water, rearranges the bonds of water and stores it in hydrogen and oxygen. The biggest part of energy storage is in water-splitting. So that's the lesson we learned and what our discovery is, is we figured out how to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and what's special is you can do it in a glass of water at atmospheric pressures and room temperature."
Nocera foresees a world where your house is your power plant:
(Nocera): "...you have a solar panel on your house -- the sun comes in. Now, with our catalyst, you can make hydrogen and oxygen. So when the sun goes down, you can then take the hydrogen and oxygen, re-combine them in a fuel cell -- and then you get electricity out. That's how the world's gonna look -- in my opinion that would be the best way to use my discovery."
Catchin' some rays, for the discovery files, I'm Bob Karson.
"The Discovery Files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation. Federally sponsored research -- brought to you, by you! Learn more at nsf.gov or on our podcast.
