Media Releases

World-renowned chemist speaks at U of T about ground-breaking renewable energy discovery

October 14, 2011

TORONTO, ON – Daniel Nocera, The Hen­ry Drey­fus Pro­fes­sor of Ener­gy and Pro­fes­sor Chem­istry at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (MIT), will be vis­it­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to on Tues­day, Octo­ber 18 to speak about the excit­ing dis­cov­ery in his lab of a prac­ti­cal way of using sun­light to split water into hydro­gen and oxy­gen, a process that could pro­vide a renew­able source of clean ener­gy for the world.

His vision is to pro­vide inex­pen­sive solar devices to every­one  wher­ev­er the sun shines, for their per­son­al ener­gy needs. One inno­va­tion in the design was the dis­cov­ery of an anode mate­r­i­al that allows the effi­cient evo­lu­tion of oxy­gen gas from water. The oxy­gen and hydro­gen pro­duced can be used in a fuel cell to clean­ly gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty, regen­er­at­ing water in the process. Con­sid­er­ing that the devel­op­ing world’s demand for ener­gy is pro­ject­ed to increase dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the next 50 years, his ideas are of vital impor­tance.

Prof. Nocera will be vis­it­ing the Depart­ment of Chem­istry as the A.R. Dis­tin­guished Lec­tur­er. His lec­ture will be the cul­mi­na­tion of the Inter­na­tion­al Year of Chem­istry 2011 Cel­e­bra­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to

EVENT DETAIL:

WHAT:          Lec­ture: “The Glob­al Ener­gy Chal­lenge and a Solu­tion”

WHERE:       Depart­ment of Chem­istry

MacLeod Audi­to­ri­um
1 King’s Col­lege Cir­cle
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to

WHEN:          Tues­day, Octo­ber 18, 4 p.m.

 

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