Stop and think back how many press releases like this you've seen over the years. New batteries, new solar panels, new water extraction methods and on and on. But they rarely move out of the lab. It's a big jump from beaker scale in the lab to million pound scale in a factory and darned few of these 'wonder technologies' make the jump.
For one thing these lab people are not engineers and have no idea what is needed to produce a successful product in the market.
So as a Chemist in my working years who also went to engineering school I greet all these press releases with a yawn. When I even bother to read them. And when you do read them there are frequent red flashing warning lights in the descriptions. They rarely if ever say just how much energy it will take to make this thing work. I read one which announced the use of Scandium in a radical new solar cell (IIRC). A quick check showed that the worldwide production of that rare material would be exhausted in days if this scheme was ever put into operation.
Anyway what these are, are attempts to pull in money in grants.
