A team of bioengineers at KU Leuven in Belgium, has been developing hydrogen panels for over a decade, and they have recently made progress towards the industrial production of panels that can extract green hydrogen gas from the air. The team believes that the adoption rate of these hydrogen panels will be similar to that of solar panels.
Hydrogen panels resemble solar panels but operate differently. They use solar energy to extract water vapor from the air at night and convert it into hydrogen and oxygen during the day. Hydrogen produced this way would be considered green hydrogen. In 2019, the team of bioengineers were able to improve the efficiency of a single panel to the point where it can produce an output of 250 liters of hydrogen per day.
The main purpose of hydrogen panels is to supplement the energy deficit that households with solar panels experience during the winter when there is less sunlight available. Excess energy generated by the hydrogen panels during the summer can be stored as hydrogen under high pressure in an underground tank, and this hydrogen can be used to generate electricity and heat during the winter when there is a shortfall. The researchers estimate that around twenty hydrogen panels would be sufficient to provide a single family with both electricity and heat for an entire winter season.
The bioengineers aim to produce hydrogen panels in large volumes and distribute them globally. They envision that by 2030, it will be possible to install these panels on the roofs of homes.
Source: universal-sci.com