Energy from the sun has been harnessed for quite some time via solar panels. They do have some drawbacks however, such as not being able to collect energy at night and the energy has to be used right away or be stored with the use of batteries. But what if we could use the suns energy and convert it into fuel even at night? Researchers from the US and Switzerland have designed a way to do just that with a prototype solar device that directly converts the Sun’s radiation into fuels that can be stored, allowing the energy to be used at night or transported to locations where it is needed. The prototype uses a quartz window and cavity to concentrate sunlight into a cylinder lined with cerium oxide, also known as ceria. The ‘rare earth element’ strips the oxygen and carbon dioxide from water pumped through the device and creates hydrogen and/or carbon monoxide that could be used to fuel hydrogen fuel cells in cars, for example, while a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide can be used to create "syngas" for fuel. Even though the prototype is grossly inefficient, the fuel created harnessing only between 0.7% and 0.8% of the solar energy taken into the vessel, future revisions could help us eliminate or slow the use of fossil fuels. For more information please visit: http://authors.library.caltech.edu/18977/
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