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World's First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Island
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."
"Powered Island" != "mobile island which moves because of Hydrogen Power".
but this is just one more reason to drink scotch from Islay.
It's not only delicious, but environmentally friendly too!
So they're using a completely renuable resource, namely wave power, to separate sea water into O2 and (2) H2.
This is a great idea for any region with significant ocean frontage. Unfortunately, it is only a great idea in such locations. We can't fuel the US gas glutton SUVs via this method, there just isn't enough ocean frontage for all the soccer-moms.
Kudos to a truly self-powered island!
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
Else, why would they have so many distilleries on that little piece of land?
of getting some hydrogen! Surely it would be more efficient to use the electricity from the wave power and send it to people's homes rather than using it to electrolyse the water into hydrogen, then burning the hydrogen?
Video Game cheats, hints a
Once the hydrogen fuel cell is complete, my plan for world domination will be one step closer to completion! I must only get my secret island stronghold fully operational, then kick off all the islanders, and I can blackmail the United Nations for... 5 BILLION DOLLARS! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
using namespace slashdot;
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This is bullshit. Cuba has been hydrogen-fuel-cell powered for decades.
I don't know if it was your meant to troll, but troll you did.
Cuba may have made some efforts to use clean, renewable energy sources (wind, wave, solar) but it's also made considerable effort to use dirty, finite sources as well, including nuclear power.
The nuclear power plant at Juragua has been under construction since 1983. It's not yet been completed, so it's not up and running, but Cuba is still trying to get the plant productive.
Unsurprisingly, for what it calls "safety concerns", the US isn't too keen to see that happen - apparently, it's OK for the US to have nuclear power plants all over the country, nuclear powered ships and submarines and even to launch nuclear powered satellites but God forbid that some communists 200 miles off the coast of Florida should want to use nuclear power too.
It's true that these concerns aren't totally unfounded as the type of reactor that the plant uses (the Soviet-designed VVER-440) doesn't have an exemplorary track record but let's remember that while the USSR had Chernobyl, the US had Three Mile Island.
By withholding its funding to the International Atomic Energy Agency - an overly-aggressive and short-sighted attempt to pressurise that body into abandoning all assistance that its giving Cuba to safely complete and operate the plant - the US is effectively shooting itself in the foot. By doing everything it can to make sure that the Cuban plant isn't built, the US is only ensuring that cost-effectiveness and completion at any cost are the paramount in Cuba's considerations, at the expense of safety.
Yet elsewhere, the US is spending millions to make sure that similar Soviet-designed plants are as safe as possible. Overall, a rather naive approach by US legislators - not the first time and it won't be the last either.
(So, in a way, there is a capitalist conspiracy, but not where you were looking.)
But I digress. Cuba obviously isn't 100 percent wave powered and, frankly, it's never likely to be. Wave power stations cost money too and, if you've got chronic power shortage problems like Cuba has, they're far less cost-effective than the alternatives.
On the other hand, Islay is hoping that its wave power station may soon provide all the energy that it ever needs - a noble goal, well worthy of our praise and good wishes.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
You're right, it isn't perfectly efficient. But, efficiency isn't the most essential aspect of power production. Usability is.
Sadly, the consumer's use of electricity doesn't vary in proportion to the tide. If it did, and the tide always produced exactly the right amount power to keep everyone's lights on then it would be best to pipe the electricty directly from the water to your power outlet. But, that's not the case.
Fuel cells allow them to store the power and distribute it as needed. This ends up being most efficient in the long run because the water-driven power station only needs to produce power equal to the usage averaged over a period of time. It dosen't need to increase production during peak hours and won't be wasteful during off-peak hours. The fuel cells take care of that.
I think if you re-read the original article you will see that hydrolysis is powered by wave energy, you know, ocean waves, not light waves.
Also, may I point you at a simple explanation of how fuel cells work? It has this cool animated gif, displaying the process. Note: no turbines.
There is this really cool tool on the web, called google, it is a search engine. You can use it to look things up, before you post stuff, preventing you from looking like a complete dope. You should try it out!
Yes, let's. You certainly don't.
1: Seawater is made out of Hydrogen and Oxygen (with lots of energy in the bonds)
No, the energy of a water molecule is lower than that of hydrogen and oxygen in pure form. You have to add energy to the system to break water down. It's an endothermic reaction. If there were lots of energy "in" the bonds within water, water would burn.
2: Solar panels at the sea locations provide the energy, albeit slowly, to electrolyze the water to the gaseous components. H 2 and O2.
Yes, they're electrolyzing hydrogen out of the seawater. No, they're not generating the electricity from solar panels. They're using a plant that generates electricity from the motion of the waves.
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.
No, not even partial credit for this one. The hydrogen is stored in tanks of some kind: "bottled" is the term they used. Proton exchange membrane fuel cells generate electricity directly from a reaction with the hydrogen (which is fed to the cell from the tank) and the oxygen in the air. You get electricity and heat, along with pure water for exhaust. There's not necessarily a turbine involved at all, although for maximum efficiency in a stationary installation you could conceivably capture the heat and use it to drive a turbine so as to increase your electrical output. But that's not really necessary; a fuel cell makes electricity all by itself.
No need to comment on your blather about solar cells; there aren't any involved. Nobody stores hydrogen in metal form as this requires temperatures near 0K. You could store it in liquid form cryonically, but it's more often stored as compressed gas at high pressure.
And the brethren went away edified.
Actually, I believe you get liquid water, not water vapor. It's pure and potable, although you'd probably want to add some minerals for taste. It may not be practical for vehicles to dump their exhaust into the public water supply, so you could either dribble it out behind as you go, or tank it to be dumped when you refuel. Or perhaps some clever engineer can come up with some other use for it.
Plus since from what I've been told the vapor comes from the hydrogen mixing with oxygen in the air. Won't this also lower the oxygen content of the air?
At a guess, not more than the internal combustion engine already does. All combustion draws oxygen out of the air. But if you look at the whole process from end to end, you see that oxygen is necessarily produced from the seawater along with the hydrogen. Assuming that oxygen eventually makes its way back into the atmosphere, either through being released on the spot or used in some application where it wasn't a reactant, there's no net loss.
But that leads to a good question: electrolysis produces hydrogen and oxygen in exactly the proportions needed for a fuel cell. Why don't they bottle the oxygen as well, and use that to feed the fuel cells' cathode? It would result in a significant boost in efficiency.
And the brethren went away edified.
According to the article, the plant produces 500 kilowatts.
Btw, even if these answers aren't so great, it's still a cool experiment - but you have to cite more details than the article does to reasonably brag that you'd save the world except that the evil oil companies won't let you. :(
Good question. Your're right about the efficiency, and it could be done that way. The only problems aren't really problems as much as they are things we're too lazy to go out of our way to deal with.
First problem: you've got another thing to tank up and cart around. You think it's hard trying to get stations to carry H, try getting them to carry H and O.
Second problem: Oxygen is dangerous, more volitile than Hydrogen which, contrary to common belief, isn't the most explosive thing in the world.
Third problem: Maybe there is one, but I haven't heard of it...
Like I said neither of these are real problems. For instance, looking a number 2, oxygen probably isn't any more dangerous than carrying around gallons of something like, say, gasoline. The real issue is more about implementation and the "why bother" attitude about packaging and transporting something that's 20 percent of the air around us.
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
A similar problem exists with solar energy. If we become too dependant on solar, we'll be totally up a creek in just under 5 billion years.
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
So, will we be seeing oygenated whiskey as Islay's Next Big Thing? It could conceivably slow or prevent the loss of brain cells. It's a pity they're not going to produce Helium (squeak)...
(this is not a
Plus a few hundred thousand who are there in spirit.