CORRECTED 19 NOVEMBER 2010; SEE LAST PAGE

are likely to be a key component of protection. Developments such as those reported

by Wu et al. and by Zhou et al. will help
identify immunogens that can elicit broadly
neutralizing antibodies and thereby become
an essential part of an AIDS vaccine.
References

1. H. W. Virgin, B. D. Walker, Nature 464, 224 (2010).

2. J. R. Mascola, D. C. Monteori, Annu. Rev. Immunol. 28,

413 (2010).
3. X. Wu et al., Science 329, 856 (2010); published online
8 July 2010 (10.1126/science.1187659).
4. T. Zhou et al., Science 329, 811 (2010); published online
8 July 2010 (10.1126/science.1192819).
5. W. R. Schief, Y. E. Ban, L. Stamatatos, Curr. Opin. HIV
AIDS 4, 431 (2009).
6. L. M. Walker, D. R. Burton, Curr. Opin. Immunol. 22, 358
(2010).
7. J. A. Hoxie, Annu. Rev. Med. 61, 135 (2010).

PERSPECTIVES

8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

L. M. Walker et al., Science 326, 285 (2009).

D. Corti et al., PLoS ONE 5, e8805 (2010).
Y. Li et al., Nat. Med. 13, 1032 (2007).
W. W. Koh et al., J. Biol. Chem. 285, 19116 (2010).
I. J. Amanna, I. Messaoudi, M. K. Slifka, Hum. Vaccin. 4,
316 (2008).
13. J. Liu, A. Bartesaghi, M. J. Borgnia, G. Sapiro, S. Subramaniam, Nature 455, 109 (2008).
14. T. Zhou et al., Nature 445, 732 (2007).
10.1126/science.1194693

ENGINEERING

Concentrating on Solar Electricity

and Fuels

Thermal energy from mirror arrays that focus

solar radiation not only generates electricity
but also could be used to synthesize fuels from
water and carbon dioxide.

Martin Roeb and Hans Mller-Steinhagen

ntermittent sources of renewable energy,

such as solar and wind power, pose a
storage problem. They must generate
more energy than the immediate demand,
so that stored energy can be used when the
resource is unavailable. Aside from pumped
hydropower, large-scale storage of electricity is still technically and economically
challenging. For solar energy, concentrating solar power (CSP) plants in regions in
the sunbelt of Earth offer ways to store this
energy on a large scale, either thermally or
as chemical fuels.
These systems use a variety of mirror
designs to focus solar radiation onto a relatively small absorber area and generate
heat at temperatures ranging from 200C to
1000C, for example, the central receiver system shown in the gure (1). This heat can be
converted into electricity with conventional
steam cycles, and some of it can be stored.
The Andasol CSP plants in southern Spain
already have a storage capacity for 7 to 8
hours of its full-load electricity generation
(2). Molten salt is used to store heat, but new
materials, such as special concretes or hightemperature phase-change materials, are in
an advanced stage of development. Furthermore, CSP plants can be operated in hybrid
mode with fossil fuels or biomass and hence
may have a capability for power generation
near 100%.
Industry projections suggest that CSPgenerated electricity will cost the same as
that from coal-, gas-, and oil-fired power
plants within less than 15 years for midload electricity at the middle ranges of cost
Institute of Technical Thermodynamics, Deutsches Zentrum
fr Luft-und Raumfahrt, Linder Hoehe, Koeln, 51147
Germany. E-mail: Martin.Roeb@dlr.de; Hans.MuellerSteinhagen@dlr.de

and demand (3). The rst commercial CSP is not limited to electricity generation. The
plants erected in the California Mohave Des- heat provided by CSP systems can be used
ert more than 20 years ago still operate at a in industrial processes, for seawater desalidesign capacity of 345 megawatts (MW). By nation, or for driving chemical reactions that
the end of this year, 850 MW of solar-thermal produce fuels for the transportation sector.
capacity will be installed in Spain alone, and A challenging goal will be to use only water
groundbreaking for the construction of 2500 and CO2 as the feedstocks for synthesis gas.
GW of CSP plants will have occurred in the The direct splitting of water and CO2 requires
United States. In total, project pipelines could operating temperatures above 2000C, and
represent 7000 MW of generating capacity present research activities focus on alternaworldwide.
tive thermochemical cycles that lower the
Although the potential for energy gen- required temperature (7). A promising reperation by CSP is vast, it is geographically resentative of these thermochemical cycles
maldistributed relative to the main electric- is the two-step water or CO2 splitting cycle
ity consumers (4). Detailed studies have that uses materials containing metal ions
identified the economic and environmen- that can be oxidized and reduced. The reactal benets of a high-voltage direct-current tor developed within the HYDROSOL projelectricity link between the MENA countries ect (8) uses a thin-walled ceramic monolith
(Middle East and North Africa) and Europe that has honeycomb channels coated with
(5). The DESERTEC Industrial Initiative the active redox materials and is designed to
aims to provide 15% of
the European and most
of the local electricity
demand from renewable
sources in the MENA
countries by 2050 (6).
CSP plants will make
the main contribution,
but other renewable
resources, such as wind
and photovoltaics, are
also included. The electricity imported through
DESERTEC will complement and stabilize
the fluctuating local
renewable energy production in Europe.
However, the poten- Mirror site. Photograph of PS-10 solar tower plant near Seville, Spain (courtial of concentrating tesy of Abengoa Solar). Solar energy is concentrated with mirrors to generate
solar power systems heat for electricity generation and chemical synthesis.

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 329 13 AUGUST 2010

Published by AAAS

773

PERSPECTIVES
absorb solar radiation. When steam or CO2
are passed through the reactor, the coating
material splits the molecules by adsorbing
and incorporating oxygen to form a higher
oxide. The efuent gas stream then consists
of pure H2 or CO. The temperature in the reactor is then increased, for example, by focusing
more mirrors onto the aperture of this reactor.
The feed gas stream is cut off, which releases
the trapped oxygen and regenerates the active
coating. Two reaction chambers are operated
in parallel, one for water/CO2 splitting and
one for reduction.
One of the prototype materials for this
kind of reaction is Fe3O4. The redox pair in
this case is FeO/Fe3O4. In practice, the pure
oxide cannot be cycled because the temperature needed to thermally reduce Fe3O4
is higher than its melting point. However,
replacing some of the iron in Fe3O4 with other
metals, such as zinc, manganese, nickel, or
cobalt, can lower the reduction temperature while maintaining the spinel structure
of these ferrite materials (911). Integrating
the ferrites into a stabilizing matrix, such as
yttrium-stabilized zirconia or cerium oxide
(ceria), can also slow down a potential sintering and deactivation of the metal oxide (12).
The second main redox system is based
on the redox pair CeO2-Ce2O3. Ceria has the
advantage that the melting point is higher
than the temperature required for the thermal
reduction step. However, other metals need to

be added to ceria to improve its reactivity and

oxygen uptake capacity (13). For both families of materials, the main challenges are the
achievement of high oxygen uptake capacities and hydrogen production rates, as well as
reduced cost and increased operational lifetime of the redox materials. The coupling of
concentrated solar radiation into the process
must also be improved, and approaches being
investigated include reactors with rotating
absorbers and components, xed and uidized bed reactors, and the use of heat transfer
uids (7, 14, 15).
The general concept of solar fuel generation was rst proven by developing and operating individual components. Subsequently,
a miniplant (which could produce about
10 kW of thermal energy) was created and
tested in DLRs solar furnace in Cologne,
Germany. This technology has recently been
scaled up to the size of 100 kW of thermal
energy. The reactor, together with all necessary peripherals, was installed in an experimental solar tower at the Plataforma Solar
de Almera, Spain. The benet of using a
solar tower arrangement is that only part of
the mirrors (heliostats) have to be refocused
to vary the temperatures of the two reactors
that produce H2 and/or CO, rather than physically moving the reactors. Several hydrogen
production cycles and metal oxide reduction cycles could be successfully investigated, with conversion of steam to H2 of up to

CLIMATE CHANGE

The Carbon Dioxide Exchange

30% (16). Continuing developments should

enable the solar-driven synthesis of fuels
from renewable sources to complement the
production of electricity.
References

1. M. Becker, B. Gupta, W. Meinecke, M. Bohn, Solar Energy

Concentrating Systems: Applications and Technologies
(Mller Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany 1995).
2. Solar Millennium (2008), The parabolic trough power
plants Andasol 1 to 3; http://www.solarmillennium.de/
upload/Download/Technologie/eng/Andasol1-3engl.pdf.
3. A. T. Kearney (2010), Solar Thermal Electricity 2025;
www.atkearney.com/images/global/pdf/STE_2025_
Study_Report_June_2010.pdf.
4. Deutsches Zentrum fr Luft-und Raumfahrt, Institute of
Technical Thermodynamics, Concentrating Solar Power
for the Mediterranean Region; www.DLR.de/tt/med-csp.
5. Deutsches Zentrum fr Luft-und Raumfahrt, Institute of
Technical Thermodynamics, Trans-Mediterranean Interconnection for Concentrating Solar Power; www.DLR.de/
tt/trans-csp.
6. DESERTEC Foundation (2009); Clean Power from Deserts; www.desertec.org/leadmin/downloads/DESERTECWhiteBook_en_small.pdf.
7. T. Kodama, N. Gokon, Chem. Rev. 107, 4048 (2007).
8. HYDROSOL project, www.hydrosol-project.org.
9. J. Miller et al., J. Mater. Sci. 43, 4714 (2008).
10. S. Lorentzou, A. Zygogianni, K. Tousimi, C. Agraotis, A.
G. Konstandopoulos, J. Alloy. Comp. 483, 302 (2009).
11. F. Fresno et al., Int. J. Hydrogen Energy 34, 2918 (2009).
12. T. Kodama, N. Gokon, T. Yamamoto, Sol. Energy 82, 73
(2008).
13. P. Fornasieri et al., J. Catal. 151, 168 (1995).
14. H. Kaneko et al., Energy Fuels 21, 2287 (2007).
15. R. B. Diver, J. E. Miller, M. D. Allendorf, N. P. Siegel, R. E.
Hogan, J. Sol. Energy Eng. 130, 041001 (2008).
16. M. Roeb et al., Sol. Energy. Published online 11 May
2010.
10.1126/science.1191137

Understanding how carbon dioxide cycles

between land and atmosphere is key to
developing better climate models.

Peter B. Reich

ne key to accurately predicting future

levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is understanding how land
and atmosphere exchange CO2. Each year,
photosynthesizing land plants remove (x)
one in eight molecules of atmospheric CO2,
and respiring land plants and soil organisms
return a similar number. This exchange determines whether terrestrial ecosystems are a
net carbon sink or source. Two papers in this
issue contribute to understanding the landatmosphere exchange by elegantly analyzing
rich data sets on CO2 uxes from a global network of monitoring sites. On page 834, Beer
et al. (1) estimate total annual terrestrial gross
primary production (GPP) in an approach
University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA. E-mail:
preich@umn.edu

774

more solidly based on data than previous simple approximations. On page 838, Mahecha
et al. (2) assess how ecosystem respiration
(R) is related to temperature over short (weekto-month) and long (annual) time scales, and
nd a potentially important but difcult-tointerpret relationship.
Beer et al. focus on quantifying GPP
locally and globally. They use general relationships between GPP and several drivers,
such as temperature, rainfall, and biome type,
to characterize and estimate GPP at 352 sites.
Then, they use ve approaches to extrapolate to global estimates; these include three
statistical models, estimating GPP indirectly
from data on catchment water ux, and modeling GPP from satellite-based estimates of
light interception by vegetation. They make
an important advance by better quantifying

(i) global GPP and the uncertainty surrounding this estimate; (ii) spatial patterns of GPP
(how much comes from tropical or boreal forests or from other biomes); and (iii) controls
on GPP, such as by rainfall and temperature.
Beer et al. note that each of the five
approaches includes simplifying assumptions and large uncertainties. They produced
estimates of global GPP that vary from 105
to 130 Pg C year1, with a 95% probability
that the value lies between 102 and 135 Pg C
year1. This is an advance, yet it shows how
far we still are from an accurate estimate of
global GPP. The 33 Pg C year1 difference
between the low and high values, for instance,
is roughly four times the annual CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel burning.
Mahecha et al. address the other half of
the land-atmosphere CO2 ux. Unlike GPP,

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