Katherine Lin for NBC News MACH:  In a few short years, house paint might be able to do more than simply brighten your walls. A team of researchers in Australia have created an experimental paint that attracts water molecules from the air and chops them up to produce hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel that can be used to generate electricity.

“Our new development has a big range of advantages,” Dr. Torben Daeneke, a research fellow at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology School of Engineering in Melbourne and leader of the team, said in a written statement. “There’s no need for clean or filtered water to feed the system. Any place that has water vapor in the air, even remote areas far from water, can produce fuel.”

If the technology is perfected and the paint can be made commercially available, it could find widespread application in sunny places. It would generate only a fraction of the power generated by conventional solar panels, Daeneke told NBC News MACH in an email, but it could supplement panels on homes and other buildings. The paint could be used on walls and other surfaces where it’s not feasible to use solar panels.  Full Article: