Harnessing the Sun’s Power to Turn Water Into Fuel

Today, pretty much everyone knows that burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment, and that new approaches are needed to provide environmentally friendly energy resources for the world’s growing population. One promising solution involves producing “green” hydrogen fuel, by using interesting materials called photocatalysts to break apart water molecules—H 2 O—into hydrogen and oxygen, using the energy of sunlight. This process is called photocatalytic water splitting, and it is an exciting area of research. In this article, we will describe our photocatalytic water splitting system, which involves coating large glass sheets with water-splitting materials, assembling them into panels, adding water, shining light on them, and collecting the hydrogen that is produced. Although our initial outdoor experiments are very promising, there is still important work to be done. We will explain some of the challenges that must be overcome before this strategy can be used to produce power on a large scale.