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Free energy breakthrough? Holy grail of water splitting technology now achieved with sunlight, mirrors and seawater

Friday, August 02, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: free energy, water splitting, hydrogen fuel

Free energy

(NaturalNews) A team of scientists at the University of Colorado, Boulder, have achieved what appears to be the "holy grail" of water splitting technology for the production and storage of clean, abundant energy. Because sunlight is free, I'm calling this "free energy."

To understand this breakthrough, it's important to first understand why solar power has so many limitations. Solar is great when the sun is shining, but storing solar power require the deployment of a large array of heavy, expensive and toxic electrical storage devices known as "deep cycle batteries." To put it in street terms, deep cycle battery technology sucks. The batteries suck, the chemicals suck, the weight sucks and the cost sucks. There is absolutely nothing to like about batteries unless you enjoy hulking around with heavy, useless objects.

So the "holy grail" of solar power has always been finding a way to store solar energy that's portable, dense and relatively lightweight. Until now, that discovery has been elusive.

But now a team of scientists in Boulder, Colorado say they have come up with "a radically new technique that uses the power of sunlight to efficiently split water into its components of hydrogen and oxygen, paving the way for the broad use of hydrogen as a clean, green fuel."

Sunlight, mirrors and a reaction chamber

The system works by exploiting a large array of ground mirrors to focus sunlight onto a tall reaction tower. There, the intense heat (2,500 degrees Fahrenheit) powers a reaction chamber containing metal oxides. The heat drives oxygen atoms off the metal oxides, causing them to "soak up" the oxygen from steam vapor introduced into the chamber. Steam vapor is, of course, made of water (H2O), so stealing the oxygen atoms from water leaves hydrogen gas that can then be collected.

In effect, the tower uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. The hydrogen gas is then collected, purified and pumped into high-pressure hydrogen containers which, pound for pound, are extremely dense "batteries" of energy that far out-perform chemical batteries.

Better yet, hydrogen gas then holds all this energy with 100% efficiency, losing no potential whatsoever, even if stored for decades. From an environmental perspective, hydrogen is also a super clean-burning fuel, producing no carbon dioxide emissions or particulate matter. (The reason hydrogen does not produce CO2 when combusted is because it does not contain carbon, obviously. CO2 production requires a carbon-based source of fuel such as hydrocarbons -- coal, gasoline, diesel, etc.)

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the 4% of the universe we've so far discovered

Scientists like to say that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. But since 96% of the known universe is actually a mysteries unidentified "dark matter" that cannot be seen or touched, this is really just a guess. There may, in fact, be a "dark hydrogen" equivalent that is far more abundant than the hydrogen we know.

Nevertheless, in terms of the stuff we can see, feel, touch and produce, hydrogen is incredibly clean and readily abundant. Planet Earth, being a "water planet" with abundant water sloshing around, has a massive supply of hydrogen fuel locked up as water molecules. If solar energy can be efficiently used to split H2O into clean hydrogen fuel, then we finally have a realistic pathway for transitioning away from the fossil fuel economy and toward a hydrogen fuel economy.

This sunlight-powered water splitting tower could be the miracle breakthrough the world needs to end its hydrocarbon addiction. It could also turn northwest Mexico into an energy production hub, as the best places to build these hydrogen production towers would be in dry, cloudless deserts that are near a source of ocean water. The Mexican lands surrounding the Gulf of California would be ideal for such projects.

Burning hydrogen is child's play; fusion reactors are the far better way to go

Despite all the promise of splitting water and burning the hydrogen as fuel, I think it's worth noting that burning hydrogen gas is a stupid way to turn hydrogen into fuel. The far smarter use of hydrogen is to use it as a fuel in fusion reactors that produce "gobs" of electricity if I may humor you with yet more street slang.

Theoretically, hydrogen isolates extracted from seawater through the use of simple chemical separation techniques can be used as a fuel in hydrogen fusion reactors. In a fusion reactor hydrogen mass is turned into energy according Einstein's famous equation E=MC2.

Via mass-to-energy conversion, a very small amount of hydrogen can produce many orders of magnitude more energy than burning the same hydrogen (which is only a chemical reaction, not a nuclear reaction). I don't know exactly how many orders of magnitude more energy we're talking about here, but I'm guessing somewhere in the range of 9 - 10 (and I welcome anyone who has the actual answer to let us know so we can update it here). Nine orders of magnitude is a billion times more energy.

To get an idea of how much energy hydrogen can produce, you've probably heard the term "hydrogen bomb." This is a bomb constructed to turn hydrogen (and special isotopes) into pure energy in order to cause maximum tactical destruction.

Ultimately, the energy goals of human civilization should include finding ways to run hot fusion reactors that produce excess energy. Until that day comes, burning hydrogen fuel is at least a cleaner chemical reaction than burning hydrocarbons. And solar-powered water splitting technologies may be the key to making hydrogen production cheap and abundant.

Oh, and don't worry about running out of hydrogen. When you "burn" it, it reacts with oxygen in the air to form water, the byproduct of hydrogen combustion. Hydrogen isn't destroyed in the process, so you never run out. As long as the sun keeps shining, you'll always have abundant hydrogen energy here on Earth, as hydrogen is merely the "carrier" of the energy, not a consumable fuel itself like oil.

Sources for this article include:
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2013/0...

http://science.naturalnews.com/index-Earth_S...

http://science.naturalnews.com/solar_power.h...

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About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

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