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."

Comments

Minor confusion

[interiot]

"Powered Island" != "mobile island which moves because of Hydrogen Power".

I didn't need another reason...

[Dambiel]

but this is just one more reason to drink scotch from Islay.

It's not only delicious, but environmentally friendly too!

Nifty!

[klocwerk]

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!

seems a very expensive way

[56ker]

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?

Re:seems a very expensive way

[josh crawley]

You've gotta understand what they are thinking. They're treating Hydrogen gas as a energy container. There's no way to feasibally hold pure energy. It disperses too quick, and cryo-torids are a ways off.

Hydrogen's fairly stable (without presence of oxygen molecules), and it takes only a wee bit of energy to start the chain reaction back to water and a ton of energy.

But to answer your question: yep, its expensive as hell.

Re:Waste of energy!

[DarkSkiesAhead]

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.

Wave power, fuel cells

[geoswan]

Solar panels at the sea locations provide the energy, albeit slowly, to electrolyze the water to the gaseous components. H 2 and O2.

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!

Re:Who sponsored this? GreenPeace?

[CaptainCarrot]

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

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.

Re:Not really a "long term" energy source though.

[jackal!]

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.