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R_www.asianscientist.com 2015 00030.txt.txt

#Efficiency Of Solar-Powered Electrolysis Doubled Having reached a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of more than 24 percent, it may soon be feasible to harness the sun to split water. In the Labasianscientist (Oct 13, 2015)- Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Miyazaki University have produced hydrogen under natural sunlight at an energy conversion efficiency of 24.4 percent, the highest ever achieved, using high efficiency solar cells to power water electrolysis. Their results, published in Applied Physics Express, is a significant step toward the substitution of fossil fuels with solar hydrogen. The demand for hydrogen as a clean fuel for vehicles and other applications is expected to increase. Unfortunately it is produced currently from fossil fuel. Conventional approaches to hydrogen production using solar-powered photocatalysts have achieved a solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion efficiency of less than ten percent, requiring improvements for real-world applications. A team of researchers led by Associate professor Masakazu Sugiyama and Project Professor Katsushi Fujii from The University of Tokyo and Associate professor Kensuke Nishioka from Miyazaki University have doubled now more than the solar conversion efficiency to 24.4 percent. They used concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules, which includes a photovoltaic cell using a high-quality semiconductor crystal similar to the ones for lasers and LEDS operating under the focal point of an optical lens. The solar-to-electricity conversion efficiency of this CPV module is as high as 31 percent. The researchers also reduced energy loss by improving the connection between the CPV modules and electrolyzers, resulting in a solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion efficiency above 24 percent t

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