Hi all, I'd like to share my stories on Southeast Asia here. As a South Korean, I stayed in two countries in the region for about 5 years. They are Singapore and Indonesia. From education, economy to traveling, food and sports, variety of topics will be touched up on. Please enjoy them and hopefully let me have a handful of your thoughts. :)
<NTU opens Asia's first solar fuels laboratory to develop new energy sources>
Asia's first solar fuels laboratory at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), set up in February 2011, aims to create efficient and sustainable sources of solar fuel by developing a device that can extract large amounts of hydrogen from water using sunlight. When perfected, this "artificial leaf" technology can reduce dependence on crude oil and help to ease problems caused by global warming and climate change.
To develop solar-driven technology that is commercially viable, the researchers need to find suitable combinations of chemical catalysts that can speed up the artificial photosynthesis process using minimal energy. That will enable the large-scale production of fuel to be carried out in a cost-effective and efficient manner.
"Nature has lots of wonderful ways to renew itself. We can learn a lot from Nature, if we look hard enough, to find sustainable solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems. Inspired by the way leaves use sunlight to produce energy, we can mimic Nature and perfect water-splitting technology. This will allow for the separation of water into hydrogen and oxygen. We can then convert solar energy into hydrogen in large quantities in a clean and sustainable manner," explained Prof Bertil Andersson, NTU's President-Designate and an internationally-renowned biochemist.
"The Solar Fuels Lab is an initiative in support of Sustainable Earth, one of NTU’s Five Peaks of Excellence," said Prof Freddy Boey, NTU's Provost-Designate, who was the previous Chair of the School of Materials Science and Engineering. The laboratory will be jointly managed by NTU's School of Materials Science and Engineering and the Energy Research Institute at NTU.