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World's First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Island

Posted by Hemos on from the making-things-work dept.

Albanach writes "According to this article in The Herald Newspaper, the island of Islay, on the West coast of Scotland is set to become the world's first Hydrogen Fuel Cell powered island. Scientests at Napier University wish to use the existing Wave Power Station to treat sea water and store the resulting hydrogen in fuel cells. The first plan is to power a building, moving on to powering the entire island in a decade."

4 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. capitalist propoganda by tps12 · · Score: 0, Troll

    This is bullshit. Cuba has been hydrogen-fuel-cell powered for decades.

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  2. The effects! by ObviousGuy · · Score: 0, Troll

    Won't anyone think about the rotation of the Earth?

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  3. Why not use a renewable resource? by CmdrTaco+(editor) · · Score: 0, Troll
    This development of alternative fuels powering large areas is indeed quite encourageing, but given the difficulty of storing large amounts, I would think there would be materials more suited to the task.

    For example, the May issue of Wired magazine had an article entitled Farming EU's Windy Coastlines about using wind turbines planted off the coast of Europe to generate power, some the size of the wing span of a 747. I'd like to see a self sufficient power grid built using this technology. Unlike many other renewable resources, this faces little opposition. Used effectively, it would be far cheaper than hydrogen.

    This is a good step; any action that diminishes the powers of the evil oil empires is what I would call a good one. Perhaps it will even lead to more developement of hydrogen powered fuel cells and the like.

  4. Who sponsored this? GreenPeace? by josh+crawley · · Score: 0, Troll

    OK. Let's understand what they're doing.

    1: Seawater is made out of Hydrogen and Oxygen (with lots of energy in the bonds)
    2: Solar panels at the sea locations provide the energy, albeit slowly, to electrolyze the water to the gaseous components. H 2 and O2.
    3: The H2 is stored until used in Hydrogen Fuel cells. Combining of Hydrogen gas, Oxygen gas and heat give lots of heat. This turns turbines.

    First problem. The solar cells are way innefficent. I'm guessing about 10% (10% of sun is turned into usable electric current). Electrolysis would be too slow, not to mention how expensive even 1 solar panel is. However, I've heard of a man at Purdue who has a prototype of a solar panel that is efficent to 35%. Problem is it's too expensive to make, and it takes more energy to make it than you can gather in it's whole lifetime.

    Second problem: All that Hydrogen gas has to be stored somewhere, and in air-tight containers. The only feasible way I can see it being stored is in liquid or metal form. Those takes nasty pressures and tempatures. Gasoline is already fairly dense and has a good energy density.

    Third problem: You still lose a lot of energy in turning the turbines.

    Overall, I'd HATE to see how inefficent it really is. OH well. BTW, isthis sponsored by any eco-freaks?