Le professeur Keith Barnham (Physics Department, Imperial College London) donnera un séminaire intitulé “All-renewable electricity supplies and rooftop solar fuel are closer than many think” le mardi 3 octore à 10h en salle des conseils du laboratoire GeePs (bât G).
Présentation (en anglais) :
Evidence will be presented that all-‐renewable electricity supplies based on wind, photovoltaic (PV) and bio-‐electric power are more reliable, cheaper and closer in many countries than people think [1]. The implications for France, with its ageing nuclear reactor fleet, will be discussed. However, renewable replacements for fossil fuels in industry and transportation still require technological developments.
The second part of the talk will discuss a proposal for a roof-top system to illuminate, with sunlight, the catalysts being developed for artificial photo-‐synthesis. The “artificial leaf” is a photo-‐electrochemical cell which uses sunlight to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide to a solar fuel. At Imperial we developed a variant of the non-‐tracking, luminescent concentrator, the Quantum Dot Concentrator (QDC) [2].
A recent breakthrough in quantum dot technology makes possible high intensity, narrow-‐band photon fluxes [3].
These are tuneable to the wavelengths of importance for the metal nano-‐particle catalysts used in artificial photo-‐synthesis. Coupled with the Quantum Well Solar Cell, which was also developed at Imperial, this makes possible a domestic roof-‐top system that generates ethanol, which can power a fuel cell in an electric car, closer than previously anticipated [4].
1. Keith Barnham, Kaspar Knorr, Massimo Mazzer, Nature Materials, 15, 115 (2016)
2. Keith Barnham et al.Applied Physics Letters, 76, 1197,(2000)
3. Noah Bronstein et al.,ACS Photonics, 2, 1576, (2015)
4. Keith Barnham, The Burning Answer: a User’s Guide to the Solar Revolution, (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2015).
Keith Barnham started his research career in particle physics at the University of Birmingham, CERN and the University of California, Berkeley. Mid-‐career, at Imperial College London, he switched to researching solar power after spending a year at Philips Research
Laboratories in Redhill, UK. His Quantum Photovoltaic group at Imperial developed a novel concentrator solar cell using quantum well technology. In commercial production this cell achieved three times the efficiency of today’s rooftop panels.
He is author of The Burning Answer: a User’s Guide to the Solar Revolution, (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2015).
Note: picture above taken from video on YouTube.
