New lab aims to turn water into fuel

SCIENTISTS from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have set up a new laboratory - the first in Asia - that aims to turn water into hydrogen fuel.

The new Solar Fuels Laboratory at NTU 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.

The energy-producing 'artificial leaf' technology can reduce help to reduce dependence on crude oil when perfected, NTU added.

Current technology requires huge amounts of energy to draw small amounts of hydrogen from water which makes it commercially unviable.

NTU's Solar Fuels Lab was officially opened by Professor Bertil Andersson, NTU's President-Designate on Tuesday. A seminar on solar fuel generation and artificial photosynthesis was also held in conjunction with the opening ceremony. The lab will be jointly managed by NTU's School of Materials Science and Engineering and the Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).

'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," said Professor Andersson, himself an internationally-renowned biochemist and pioneer in 'artificial leaf' technology.