Area requirements, solar-hydrogen

The distribution of the population density is highly concentrated on the coastal regions, 60% (out of 33 millions) in a land area that represents less than 6% of the whole territory. Such situation imposes the recourse to the Atlas and desert regions in order to host future population. The last requires the building of thousands of houses and even new cities. On-site electricity production is suitable since grid extension is not economically viable in most cases. In this regard, small-scale PV solar hydrogen units would be... 

If the March insolation in Figure 1.28 also represents the yearly average, then each square meter of collector area receives 2,628 kWh/yr. If these numbers are correct, and if the collector efficiency is 20% (solar collector efficiencies can range from 5 to over 30%), then each square meter of collector area will produce 526 kWh/yr. Based on such calculations, one can calculate the area requirements of solar-hydrogen power plants in any location (see Section 4.2). 

Suppose that this energy is to be supplied to cars in the form of hydrogen in a fuel cell from re-formed methanol, (c) How many moles of C02 andH2 would be required to form the methanol (d) Calculate the cubic meters of air per day that would have to be collected at a given gas station to allow extraction of the necessary C02 (0.3% in air), (e) Then calculate the number of moles per day of H2 needed to form the corresponding methanol (fuel cell efficiency is 60%). (f) Calculate the area of solar panels (number of square meters for a 10-kW sunny day) required to produce this H2 at 20% efficiency for the conversion of solar... 

An example of recent achievement in this area is a flexible, thin film Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cell deposited on a titanium foil, which was combined with a TiC>2 photocatalyst layer and modified by a niobium-doped titanium oxide front electrode to function as a photoelectrochemical tandem cell/membrane for a direct light-driven hydrogen evolution from an aqueous solution [48], Under illumination with UV/vis light, the system produced up to 0.052 pLH2/scm2 (e.g. the hydrogen formation rate was approximately 7,250 pmol/h g relative to the amount of TiC>2 used). Several aspects of the operating principles of the photoelectrochemical devices, the materials requirements, main bottlenecks, and the various device concepts (in relation to H2... 

The University of Warwick in England estimated that converting every vehicle in the U.S. to hydrogen power would require the electricity output of a million wind turbines enough to cover half of California. Solar panels would also require huge areas of land. 

ElectrolyticaUy generated hydrogen gas fuel is perhaps the ultimate green fuel in that the electricity can be generated from renewable sources that may be intermittent in nature. In Iceland, the electricity is generated by abundant renewable hydroelectric and geothermal steam sources. In other areas, solar cells and windpower can be used to produce electricity required to electrolyze water. These sources are inherently... 

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