Self-Cleaning Oven plus Magnifying Glass to Produce Hydrogen

The chemical engineers at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California, which is also the academic home to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), have been doing a little home cooking recently to produce hydrogen.

In fact, what the engineers have developed is a modified self-cleaning over with an intense magnifying glass that uses solar energy plus a material used in self-cleaning ovens called cerium oxide (or ceria) to break down CO2 and water (H2O).

Ceria has the property of “breathing” oxygen, dissociating it from it molecules for a time at high temperatures. When it does this with water, then hydrogen can be captured and used for powering fuel cell cars and other hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Ceria has been used for years to clean off debris, baked on gunk and other stuff that accumulates over time in ovens. But, add a little solar energy and now ceria will shake and bake water into hydrogen and oxygen which can be used for fuel.

Don’t be surprised if sometime in the future a modified form of this oven is moved into your garage to cook up some hydrogen for your fuel cell car. And cooking up a big old apple pie would be a nice added touch as well.