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Domain: qsinano.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to qsinano.com.
Comments · 7
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Re:Nuclear
Apparently these researchers have done much better using other materials.
http://www.qsinano.com/white_papers/2006_09_15.pdf
Shipping large quantities of electricity long distances is lossy and the transmission lines are ugly, take a lot of land and hard to get built. A big underground pipeline can transmit FAR more energy than any electric transmission line we know how to build.
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Re:I'm looking for reasons against "Water4Gas"
http://www.qsinano.com/
By coating the electrodes with nano-particles, they've made electrolysis around 85% efficient. They believe they can achieve 96% efficiency in around 5 years. -
Re:Makes no sense, until you check the link
Yes, everyone please read the link http://www.qsinano.com/news/newsletters/2008_02/f1.php. It is a press release which is informative, technical and skips PR-speak.
They never mention making hydrogen cheaper than gasoline, as the EETimes article does. Instead they talk about their efficient electrolysis method and how it can be used plug-in hybrid cars. The car has the electrolysis machine on board and makes H2 from electricity. The car then runs on a fuel cell. They also talk about what the power source is - a rarity for any article on "hydrogen power" - which could be "off-peak electricity at night and solar power during the day."
There is also good discussion about the problems with the current methods of hydrogen production.
If their technology is as good as they claim, then we may have a good alternative for storing or transporting energy generated by renewable means such as solar and wind. Since solar and wind are best sited where the best conditions are (such Texas for wind or the US Southwest for solar) and their power output tends to be variable with time of day and weather, co-locating an hydrogen-production facility could smooth out the supply bumps, and allow the energy to be transported by tank or pipeline without the energy losses inherent in long-distance electric transmission.
Good news indeed. -
Re:Problem with storageThey mention in TFA that this process is so efficient that cars could do the electrolysis on the go with a tank of distilled water, but unless it's efficient enough to be self sustaining that won't work.
You're overreading the article, which includes an unfortunate quote from an executive."Instead of switching 170,000 gas stations over to hydrogen, using our electrodes could enable consumers to make their own hydrogen, either in the garage or right on the vehicle," said Kevin Maloney, president, chief executive officer and co-founder of QuantumSphere. "Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car."
The fundamental requirement here is a source of electricity to generate the hydrogen that will be used as an input for a hydrogen fuel cell. That electricity will not be available in a vehicle that is "on the go" because any conversion from potential energy -> electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity is inherently less efficient that using that potential energy via fewer steps, i.e., potential energy to electricity or mechanical force such as in electric (battery or carbonaceously fuelled fuel cell) or internal combustion powered vehicles.
The point of the claim, although overstated by the executive, is that the hydrogen could be generated from electricity in a plant in a garage, or even from electricity delivered to a plant in the car when it is parked rather than requiring a trip to the hydrogen station down the block. Think of the plug-in-hybrid concept, but using hydrogen as the energy store instead of battery packs.
I also suspect that an unstated part of the argument, which they assume would be known by their target audience, is that you could have a 50% efficient plant using a cheap nickel powder or a 70% efficient plant using a very expensive platinum powder, but that the 70% efficient plant would be impractical for mass distribution due to the gob of capital that an individual would have to sink into the platinum catalyst. Instead, they claim to have developed an 80% efficient not-as-cheap nanomaterial that an individual (supposedly) could afford to purchase as part of an in-garage or in-vehicle generation system. Whitepaper.
You'd still have to store the hydrogen in the vehicle, at least for the short term, or, being the pessimist that I am, run down to the local hydrogen station, but if you take their claims at face value you would not need to have hydrogen delivered from the refinery-scale hydrogen electrolysis plant located halfway into the next state. -
The press release makes a little more sense
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Makes no sense, until you check the linkThe article as written makes no sense. You need energy to electrolyze the water to produce hydrogen, so you can't just carry a tank of water in your car instead of a tank of hydrogen; you still need to carry around energy in some form.
The commentary on the original article, though, links to the the press release which clarifies it. The application they're talking about is a plug-in rechargable car. When you're at home, you plug it in, the car electrolyzes water to produce hydrogen, and then, when you unplug it, you run the car on the hydrogen.
The application, then, doesn't address the problem of how to store hydrogen, only the problem of how to produce it.
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Re:Pretty light on detail
Thanks for your input. Some quick googling suggests that the current state-of-the-art hydrogen conversion is approaching 75% efficiency (See http://www.qsinano.com/white_papers/2006_09_15.pdf, note this is lab efficiency, not truly applied yet). Assuming that the efficiency continues to improve, I would expect that that value will rise notably by 2020 and beyond. When you factor in the NG used, transmission losses, etc., compressed air is only about 80% efficient (see post 101 of the SciAm discussion), so it would seem that hydrogen might be feasible as a replacement in the not terribly distant future.
Since there would also be lost efficiency going the other way (hydrogen > electricity), it probably isn't a very good sole storage solution, but it would seem to be a good solution to burn hydrogen in place of the NG. That would obviously result in further reduced efficiency, but would remove any Co2 from the equation. I'm not a chemist, physicist, or really any other -ist, but it seems like there is at least some potential there.