豆腐卤水有望降低太阳能成本

Two new studies offer signs that this could be changing quickly. One offers a new way to produce solar cells more cheaply and safely than current methods. The other indicates that concentrating solar power, which uses the sun’s energy to heat up a liquid that drives a turbine, could supply “a substantial amount of current energy demand.”
两项新研究提供的迹象表明，这种状况有可能会迅速发生改变。其中一项研究提供了一种全新的太阳能电池生产方式，它要比现有方法更便宜，更安全。另一项研究显示，聚焦式太阳能发电系统（即使用太阳的能量来加热液体，以驱动涡轮机，简称CSP）能够满足“目前相当大一部分能源需求。”

In a study released Wednesday in journal Nature, University of Liverpool’s Jon Major and several other researchers announced that they had found that magnesium chloride, which is used in making tofu, bath salts and applied to roads in the winter could replace cadmium chloride in the making of second-generation, think-film solar cells.
《自然》杂志(Nature)上周三发布的一份研究报告中，利物浦大学(University of Liverpool)的乔恩o梅杰和其他几位研究人员宣称，氯化镁可以取代生产第二代薄膜太阳能电池所用的氯化镉。氯化镁是制作豆腐和浴盐的原料，还可用来融化冬季道路上的冰雪。

Speaking in a teleconference from Copenhagen, Major said magnesium chloride, which is extracted from seawater, would cost $0.001 per gram compared to $0.3 for cadmium chloride. It would also eliminate the challenges and expense of handling cadmium chloride, a highly toxic compound that requires elaborate safety measures to protect workers during its manufacture and a special disposal process when panels are no longer needed.
梅杰在哥本哈根参加一个电视电话会议时表示，氯化镁源自海水，每克成本仅为0.001美元，远低于每克0.3美元的氯化镉。此外，它还能够消除处理氯化镉的挑战和费用——氯化镉是一种剧毒化合物，需要复杂的安全措施来保护生产工人，废弃的电池板也需要一道特殊的处理程序。

“So what we have done without any loss of efficiency is to replace expensive and highly toxic material with one that is completely benign and much lower cost in the process,” Major said. “This offers a great cost benefit for production of these kinds of solar cells and could help make a step change in the production of them.”
“所以，我们完全可以用一种完全良性而且成本低得多的物质来取代这种昂贵且带有剧毒的原料，而且无需承受任何效率损失，”梅杰说。“对于各种太阳能电池的生产商来说，这是一项巨大的成本收益，有可能推动生产过程发生巨变。”