Scientists from German Aerospace Center (DLR) have created the synlight, which acts like an artificial sun meant to create carbon neutral power.
The synlight is made up of 149 xenon short-arc lamps that have a 350-kilowatt array which is 10 thousand times the radiation of the sun at Earth’s surface. The synlight can reach 3 thousand degrees Celsius, 5432 degrees Fahrenheit, with these lamps.
High temperatures such as these are used by researchers to manufacture fuels including hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen fuel is considered the fuel of the future since it does not produce carbon dioxide when burned.
If hydrogen fuel does not produce carbon dioxide it means there are no greenhouse gasses and there is no effect on global warming. Hydrogen fuel in a liquid state can combust with one-tenth of the energy that gasoline would need to light up.
However, hydrogen fuel doesn’t naturally take place on Earth. To produce hydrogen there is a significant amount of energy needed for scientists to split the water into its two elements, hydrogen and oxygen.
Fuels, such as hydrogen that use solar power offer the production of chemically raw materials and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions into the air. The creation of the synlight will help enhance further research in this field of fuels needing solar power.
It is not to say that hydrogen has not been produced because it has. Several years ago, the scientists from the German Aerospace Center Institute of Solar Research already produced hydrogen through solar radiation on a laboratory scale.
But if there is an interest in using hydrogen for human consumption, scientists must produce hydrogen at a larger scale that will catch the interest of the industrial applications.
That’s what the synlight objective is, to produce hydrogen on a larger scale in hopes of someday to being the source that removes carbon releasing fuels from the road. While providing inexpensive and carbon neutral power.
