"Professors Akira Fujishima and Kenichi Honda"

Forget this discovery OJ, you've already proven that the Japanese culture is dead or dying. The future is Shia science.

h:

Note that they made the discovery thirty years ago, before the rot had set in. And take a look at the Nobel page to see how unusual their winning would be.

Better boost my 401k in the next 5-6 years before the oil industry collapses, I guess. :)

You know how there's special "socially conscious" mutual funds that only invest in hippie companies? Well, I want a mutual fund that only invests in pure evil, polluting, socially unconscious companies. Like Omni Consumer Products, the Tyrell Corporation and the Umbrella Corp. Where are companies like that in the real world?

We'll see if this really pans out. The most likely problem is the lifecycle of the ceramics and supporting infrastructure. Is there in fact a net gain when you subtract the cost of manufacture from the expected energy used from burning the hydrogen? That's a question too rarely asked about this kind of technology.

AOG:

Agreed. Also, we use a really quite surprising amount of oil; if replacing that requires paving Arizona with this stuff things get complicated...

Wonderful if true, but there is no way the extracted hydrogen can release more energy than the incoming sunlight provided, which makes this an area-dependent process.

The creation of hydrocarbon deposits was also area dependent, but over huge swaths of time (keeping in mind, a la evolution, that since we have never observed oil being created, it never happened and therefore doesn't exist).

I wonder how much area would have to be devoted to this process to supply ongoing energy needs.

Why assume that the solar collectors need to be on land? Why not an offshore, floating collector complex?

Jeff:

Stephen DenBeste ran the numbers on this for California in a blog entry. It is, as engineers say, nontrivial.

In cracking water to make hydrogen won't the
various minerals present in water need to be
discarded at some point? Will we have special
landfills for these discarded minerals?

Governor Breck, check out the Vice Fund (symbol VICEX).

There was an interesting Physics Today article about this last month: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-7/p47.html

Figures 5-6 are relevant to the question of how much solar-cell area is necessary to meet US needs. The answer--a lot.

And what to do about all that poisonous free oxygen?

As far as the free oxygen and the residual minerals, the hydrogen energy cycle would be a closed loop. The oxygen released through hydrogen production will be reunited with the hydrogen when it is burned. The residual minerals will not grow over time, as the amount of water will remain constant, less the amount accounted for by the amount of hydrogen in the energy pipeline at any one moment.

Where does Al Gore stand on this? And how's the turkey gut to oil program working out in MO?

J.H.;

Mr. Duquette is quite correct. It's unlikely that the system will convert more than a tiny fraction of the water into hydrogen. The impurities will simply by carried of by the 99% of the water that's not converted.

"In cracking water to make hydrogen won't the various minerals present in water need to be discarded at some point? "

This sort of system might have to divert some of the produced energy to desalinate the water first. I'd assume that considering that desalination is used in lots of places, that wouldn't be a problem. Another loss of efficiency to be considered, as well as shipping in lots of water to dry sunny locations near the solar collectors.

Another area of concern is scaling up the distribution system for the produced hydrogen. Maybe LPG will be the model, but how about zeppelin tankers? But in any case, if we are going to build a whole new infrastructure, it had better show at least the same efficiencies as the technologies its supposed to replace, or it'll never happen.

It always amazes me that the same people who insist that there is no environmental problem because humanity is so ingenious that some future discovery will solve all our problems then argue that we'll never convert to non-fossil fuel resources because there will be no future discovery that ever solves the problem.

Genecis: "And how's the turkey gut to oil program working out in MO?"

Via Wikipedia: Thermal depolymerization:
"Anything Into Oil" [update].

Raoul, you either assume too much or you are counting on Australia to have less crazy environmental laws than we do.

There's a woman in the county who is desalinating sea water to get the salt. (Want to pay $4 an ounce for salt? People do. What a country! But that's another story.)

Once she's taken the salt out, she is not permitted to return the freshened sea water to the ocean. EPA is afraid she'll dilute the ocean to unacceptable levels, apparently.

So she's planning to bottle the leftover water and compete with Perrier.

What a country!

Harry, did you report on this in your paper? Is there a link to the story?

Yes, on May 15, but we don't archive stories past one week.

The company, at www.HawaiiKaico.com, planned to post at least part of my stories, but I see they haven't done it yet.

Try www.hawaii-sbdc.org/reports/ar2002/ar02-10.pdf for a business summary.

If that isn't enough, I have a clipping I could send you. I see my memory fails me; the salt will sell for a mere $2/oz.

It's still a pretty great country.