Provide every house on the planet with an artificial
leaf and we could satisfy our 14 terrawatt need with
just one gallon of water a day.
One gallon of water a day, in case we are talking about freshwater, is waaaay to much.
In case you haven't noticed, there are regions in this world with a freshwater deficiency (precisely those third world countries which would benefit from something like this), and one gallon of water per day is enough for 3, even 4 people to drink per day.
The article doesn't make it clear if this can function with salt-water, which would be more difficult. And if it cannot, this is not bio-friendly or cheap for that matter.
The US and other western nations would make up for it quickly. According to http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display... we currently use 200 Billion gallons of water per day for the current Coal/Nuclear system. There's around 115 million households in the us so one gallon per house per day would be exponentially better.
Maybe it's possible to make this a closed circuit by channeling the "burnt" water back into the solar cell. This way, the daily water consumption could be brought down to (almost) zero.
I guess that this would need distilled water anyway.
This fact concerned me, especially when they suggested using this in India. 80% of Indians currently rely on a finite subterranean water supply. When this runs out, this will pose a very serious humanitarian problem. I'm hoping the technology they mention can be used or adapted to use sea water.
In case you haven't noticed, there are regions in this world with a freshwater deficiency (precisely those third world countries which would benefit from something like this), and one gallon of water per day is enough for 3, even 4 people to drink per day.
The article doesn't make it clear if this can function with salt-water, which would be more difficult. And if it cannot, this is not bio-friendly or cheap for that matter.