Belgian scientists have succeeded in developing a solar panel that makes hydrogen gas. The researchers at the University of Leuven worked on it for 10 years.

It works like this: the panel absorbs moisture from the air. Together with electricity from sunlight, it converts that into hydrogen gas. Hydrogen gas can store and produce both electricity and heat. With this, a supply can be built up in the summer for the winter.

One panel converts 15 percent of sunlight into hydrogen gas, an average of 250 liters per day. According to the researchers, this is a world record.

Twenty "hydrogen panels" can supply a family with electricity and heat for an entire year. Whoever has a car that runs on hydrogen needs another twenty panels. The first will be placed on a house in the small town of Oud-Heverlee on a trial basis.

Households that want to use the technology will eventually need a storage tank as well. What it will cost is not yet known.

Ad van Wijk, professor of Future Energy Systems at TU Delft, is enthusiastic about the applications of hydrogen and the Belgians' project. "The efficiency is now 15 percent but this system is still under development, still far too expensive and far from market ready. But it is the same type of development we saw 20 to 30 years ago with solar cells making electricity."

The Netherlands is also working on ways to extract hydrogen from the air. The Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research, Differ, together with car manufacturer Toyota, is developing a system that absorbs water vapor and uses solar energy to split that vapor into hydrogen and oxygen.

Both the Belgian and Dutch methods take solar panels as the starting point and hydrogen as the goal, only the path to get there is different.

"It works in the laboratory to produce hydrogen from sunlight and humidity," says Differ spokesman Gieljan de Vries. "The research project that will now start, with a grant from Dutch research financier NWO, is aimed at making the devices work outdoors as well and increasing their efficiency and lifespan."

Four years have been set aside for the project. "And I expect that halfway through we will already have a nice setup that can be tested outside," says De Vries.

Once it is possible to produce hydrogen, he says the applications will be many times wider than just the auto industry. "Eventually you can even make clean kerosene. This is really a stepping stone."

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