Why not make a route for energy crisis, namely, electricity can be generated by photovoltaic solar cells and used to carry out the electrolysis of water? I rarely heared about this route, is it impossible? after all, the electricity is very cheap.
Dear Xiaorong,
welcome,
This question is very interesting when i was working KING SAUD University at Saudi Arabia, i took part on a project called Solar hydrogen, which exactly follows the route you proposed in your question. There were two components for the project the PV electricity generators and the water electrolyser that is driven by the PV generator. The project was hosted by the King Abdulaziz for the science and technology and established in the solar village. It is built with the help of Germany. We made investigations for direct photoelectrochemical water electrolysis. I could build pv device that can directly analyse the water by the solar radiation. This was from 1990 to 1994.
When you visit my profile page/ research you will find some decisive contribution on such system.
After returning to Egypt i stopped working on such important project. Really i could put the concepts and the principles of the conversion process from solar energy to hydrogen by photoelectochemical electrodes.
You can find my papers by following the link:https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Abdelhalim_Zekry/research
Best wishes
I do not agree that electricity is cheap. With the exception of India, China,Canada, and U.S.A, all other countries have relatively expensive electricity in real terms especially in countries like Spain, Denmark, and Germany not mentioning the 3rd world developing countries .
In fact, the price of electricity has doubled or tripled in many parts of the world in recent years.
In addition to the above, the present photovoltaic solar cells are relatively costly, short-lived, and with relatively low energy efficiencies.
There is still a need for more R & D in this area since the picture is not as rosy as we wish.
Dear Xiaorong
I would like to invite you to read my short paper : From conventional to renewable energy transformation challenge in the link: Method From conventional to renewable energy transformation challenge
Best wishes
Have a look at:
http://www.neocarbonenergy.fi/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/03_Aghahosseini-1.pdf
and related work of LUT.
On what basis is PV electricity claimed to be expensive when the source energy is free? The only cost is the depreciation cost of the equipment plus maintenance, both of which are less than a fossil fuel plant of the same power.
But regarding the electrolysis of water - no, I am not a great enthusiast. Water is not easy to electrolyse, it's a poor conductor of electricity so it needs ions added to it, and the electrolysing process tends to de-ionise them and produce at least one of them instead of oxygen at the positive electrode. You get hydrogen, true, but that's not very easy to handle, and it has a poor energy density requiring it to be compressed to hundreds of atmospheres.
A much better material to electrolyse is nickel hydroxide which readily conducts electricity - you get hydrogen and nickel oxyhydroxide which also conducts electricity. Then you can store the hydrogen in a rare earth matrix - and you have a NiMH battery.
Nizar Matar: "I do not agree that electricity is cheap."
In general (i.e., looking at the actual consumer prices), you're right, but with respect to renewables, you're wrong. Even in Germany the manufacturing costs of 1 kWh of PV electricity is in the order of 0.1 Euro, with a clear downward trend (cf. "Photovoltaics Report" of Fraunhofer ISE, August 2018, https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/photovoltaics-report.html).
Nizar Matar: "In addition to the above, the present photovoltaic solar cells are relatively costly, short-lived, and with relatively low energy efficiencies."
This is not true: PV cells and modules have become so cheap and long-lived that, despite the seemingly low efficiency, the above-mentioned electricity price is already one of the lowest available (cf. "Levelized Cost of Electricity- Renewable Energy Technologies" of Fraunhofer ISE, March 2018, https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-of-electricity.html).
Electricty in Australia is very expensive to BUY at a consumer level, though it is very cheap to GENERATE. This is because the supply chain, which used to be a public utility that did not need to generate a real profit, has been broken into four separate private entities. Generators 'produce' the electricity, sell it to the Transmission companies, and make a profit. The Transmission companies sell it to the Distribution companies, and make a profit. The distribution companies sell it to 'resellers' who have no idea what electricity is, and make a profit. The resellers then charge the consumers for electricity that they neither generate, transmit or distribute and make a profit. And governement wonders why it costs so much!
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