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Cheaper, Cleaner Hydrogen Without Platinum
keithww writes "Looks like the hydrogen economy may have gotten a whole lot cheaper. Wisconsin team engineers gas from biomass
using common metals of tin, nickel, and aluminum instead of platinum. This looks like a good way to get rid of biowaste also." Of course, there's still a long way to go before the automotive industry is using it, but it is good news nonetheless.
And does anyone actually believe that the fossil fuels industry will lie down and let this happen without a fight?
Two words: The Sun
It's much easier to get methane from biowaste. And methane can be used nearly in the same way like hydrogen for electric cells. In fact, I think the whole stuff is even cheaper and simpler with methane.
The only argument against methane is its mind alterating effects (halluzinations etc), so drug addicts might use it as a substitution for heroine and crack.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Didn't a recent article say hydrogen was as bad for the ozone as sheep farts?
cheap, renewable hydrogen
Paving the way for cheap, renewable forms of transportation. *Foom!*
The coolest voice ever.
Wisconsin team engineers gas from biomass
Apparently I wasn't the only one to eat Taco Bell last night...
Ok, so you can make Hydrogen from biomass. I really wish they would give an example instead of just saying that it can be scaled from small output for batteries and such. Does the entire earths surface have to be covered with biomass before we have enough for our energy needs, or can we just use somehwere the size of Iowa?
this is the future
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Work is being done on using carbon nanorods to store hydrogen (amongst others by the Renewable Energies Research Lab in Golden, CO). These would be cheap and safely disposable and probably represent the future of hydrogen fuel tech.
Even if the auto industry/petrochem industry did prevent the widespread adoption from being used in the US, there are other countries like Japan which have the capability to engineer complex systems, the discipline to deploy them, and who would welcome reducing their depndence on foreign oil.
Of course, there's still a long way to go before the automotive industry is using it, but it is good news nonetheless.
.. maybe call this "mr. hydrogen" instead?
anyone else get the image of doc brown tossing in some banana peels and beer into "mr. fusion"??
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i do not use drugs, i AM drugs -- Dali
We should just cycle everywere. Cheap, environemntally friendly and relaxing
rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
...as a legally required component for cars is the day the US economy goes through the toilet as LOTS of mechanics, repair shops, dealerships, and even manufacturers will be screwed. Not to mention all the gas stations, and the fact that if we stop buying the bulk of the oil exports from the Gulf nations, their economies will take a major hit as well, leading factions there to blame the "American Devils" for crippling their countries, leading to bombings on US soil, which will of course lead to then-United States President Jeb Bush declaring that the new Axis of Evil will pay, leading to a major boost in our wartime economy as our hydrogen powered tanks roll through Iraq again. So maybe it will be a wash, after all.
This is giving me visions of a pack of suit-wearing velociraptors lobbying on the floor of Congress. Of course, when the honorable representative won't give in a favorable vote, they attack from both sides at once...
Today it's turkey but tomorrow it's people... PEOPLE!
Laws are for people with no friends.
I thought we just had a report a few weeks ago, right after Bush anounced his new hydrogen car program, that hydrogen was bad for the enviroment?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Like methanol.
Pure hydrogen fuel cells sound like a great idea, no pollution but water.
Except then you come to the problem of storage and transportation and have to spend a truly massive fortune on research and development like this, and, once that's done you also have the job of upgrading the entire energy distribution infrastructure which oddly enough will also be rather expensive.
But hey, go ahead, it's a free market, someone else will come along with much cheaper solution.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Whatever happened on research on anti-matter reactors? The entire concept is feasable, and it is very effeicient. In most nuclear fission reactions, the efficency is about 8%, and combustion reactions usually have substantially less, at less than a tenth of a percent. In an anti-matter reaction, nothing is wasted, and the efficency is 100%.
could it produce 1.21 gigawatts? Great Scott!
go grab the compost. (?)
seriously though, decomposing biomass is not always all that pleasant. DO you think they envision filling stations? While it's somewhat nasty it seems feasible to refuel at home, as long as the catalyst components are cheap enough for the home user.
And therefore more difficult to handle than a liquid.
So that's another argument against methane.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Although the Hindenberg disaster is famous, there are some sites that say hydrogen didn't cause the airship to explode. It would make for an interesting future to see lots of hydrogen-powered vehicles on the roads, and might have a chance at breaking our dependence on oil.
Why? Because the fossil fuels industry is really just a chemistry industry. They don't really care that it's petroleum they're selling to you. As long as it's something that they can sell to you.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
It's cos you actually get the performance you would expect from a 348mpg carburator and oddly enough, nobody will buy a car which goes from 0-60 in four and a half hours.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Raney-NiSn can perform for at least 48 hours... before what? Before it has to be replaced? Before it has to rested? What happens after 48 hours?
The materials required are just one expense, the catalyst typically is expected to be reusable (consumed at a very low rate due to inefficiencies). However, the amount of raw material required to extract the energy, the size of the apparatus and the amount of energy required to get a unit of energy are probably the real issues. If it takes more than a Joule to extract the hydrogen required to generate a Joule of energy, the system is only viable for special applications, not as an energy source.
Does this mean we can feed trash to our cars just like in Back to the Future?
YAFIRL (Yet another Free iPods referral link)
You're killing the planet! Recycling is bad! Landfills are good!
No, I'm not kidding.
Global warming may be due to humanity's CO2 emissions, or solar radiation, or something we haven't even discovered yet, but it's something detrimental to our society and it'd be nice to do something about it. Well, the best way is to stop burning stuff, obviously. On the other hand, our society runs on our burning stuff. That's not good.
Well, the least we can do is stop burning stuff that gives us the least benefit. That, my friends, is garbage. Waste incinerators, even if they provide cogeneration, would run at a loss if they weren't paid extra by people who don't want the stuff they burn. So it's not such a big deal to NOT burn the garbage and burn something more efficient instead.
Further, while there are some materials it may make sense to recycle, when it comes to plastics, you're better off burying it. Every bit of plastic you DON'T recycle is another quantity of oil that will never be burned, but will instead go back to sequestering carbon under the ground.
From http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/solar.htm
Funny!
Many groups and individuals are proposing that our government spend tax money on research and development of systems to utilize solar energy. They urge construction of vast solar energy collectors to convert sunlight to electricity to supply our energy needs. They would even put solar collectors on roofs of homes, factories, schools, and other buildings. Proponents of this technology claim that energy obtained from the sun will be safer and cleaner than coal, oil, or nuclear energy sources.
We view these proposals with alarm. Unscrupulous scientists and greedy promoters are hoodwinking a gullible public. We consider it rash and dangerous to commit our country to the use of solar energy. This solar technology has never been utilized on such a large scale, and we have no assurance of its long-range safety. Not one single study has been done to assess the safety of electricity from solar energy as compared to electricity from other sources.
The promoters of solar energy cleverly lead you to believe that it is perfectly safe. Yet they conveniently neglect to mention that solar energy is generated by nuclear fusion within the sun. This process operates on the very same basic laws of nuclear physics used in nuclear power plants and atomic bombs!
And what is the source of this energy? It is hydrogen, a highly explosive gas (remember the Hindenberg?) Hydrogen is also the active material in H-bombs, that are not only tremendously destructive, but produce dangerous fallout. The glib advocates of solar energy don't even mention these disturbing facts about the true sources of solar energy. What else are they trying to hide from us?
In addition to the known dangers cited above, what about the unknown dangers, that very well might be worse? When pressed, scientists will admit that they do not fully understand the workings of the sun, or even of the atom. They will even grudgingly admit that our knowledge of the basic laws of physics is not yet perfect or complete. Yet these same reckless scientists would have us use this solar technology even before we fully understand how it works.
Admittedly we are already subject to a natural `background' radiation from the sun. We can do little about that, except to stay out of direct sunlight as much as possible. The evidence is already clear that too much exposure to sunlight can cause skin cancer. But solar collectors would concentrate that sunlight (that otherwise would have fallen harmlessly on waste land), convert it to electricity and pipe it into our homes to irradiate us from every light bulb! We would then not even be safe from this cancer-producing energy even in our own homes!
We all know that looking at the sun for even a few seconds can cause blindness. What long term health hazards might result from reading by light derived from solar energy? We now spend large amounts of time looking at the light from television monitors or computer screens, and one can only imagine the possible long-term consequences of this exposure when the screens are powered with electricity from solar collectors. Will we develop cataracts, or slowly go blind? Not one medical study has yet addressed itself to this question, and none are planned.
In their blind zeal to plug us in to solar energy, scientists seem to totally ignore possible fire hazards of solar energy. Sunlight reaching us directly from the sun at naturally safe levels poses little fire threat. But all one has to do is concentrate sunlight, with a simple burning- glass, and it readily ignites combustible materials. Who would feel safe with solar energy concentrators on their roof? Could we afford the fire insurance rates?
These scientists, and the big corporations that employ them, stand to profit greatly from construction of solar-power stations. No wonder they try to hide the dangers of the technology and suppress any open discussion of them.
Proponents of solar energy present facts, figures and graphs to su
But why would I use Hydrogen to fill my new fuel-cell powered Escalade then? I need tha bling-bling in tha gas tank, yo!
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Isn't it, perhaps, the whole idea of an automobile, which is inherently inefficient, which needs re-thinking? It seems that support for rail over long distances, and metro-like systems for shorter distances might be more beneficial to all. Trains do not require huge streets, they do not require huge areas for parking, they do not lead to massive congestion, they do not cause deaths on a huge scale. (More Americans are killed every year from road fatalities than were killed in the war in Vietnam).
It may be that the car is too ingrained in the American psyche to dispense with it... but that's no reason to keep it either
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
That I've heard this argument without reference to the RIAA/MPAA.
Like this one:
http://www.cyber-media.com/aircar/
Even less polluting than a hydrogen powered vehicle, the only exhaust is clean air. Ironically, the air is cleaner going out than going in because it has to be filtered before reaching the engine.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I can just see it now: pulling up to the fuel station, asking the station attendant to fill 'er up, and watching as he pulls down his pants, defecates in my tank, then fills it up with banana peels, rusty cans and empty Chinese cans, Back-to-the-Future-style.
But then, I am not advocating hydrogen either...
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I'm as green as the next frog, but hydrogen's a LONG way from fueling transportation on this planet. Didn't MIT post a study showing diesel-powered hybrids as the shortest, fastest way to environmental remediation for our roads?
That's not to stop the U of W's process from fueling a large number of fixed polluters. For example, the giant cooling plant (part of a co-gen facility) for the building I work in could benefit from some H2. Bring it on, just don't waste time trying to get it into cars & trucks.
I'll go back under my rock now...
Whats the normal process for 'creating' hydrogen? I guess I assumed they just mixed a couple of chemicals together and trapped it in balloons like we did in chem class in highschool.
"Should I be concerned about Dihydrogen Monoxide?
Yes, you should be concerned about DHMO! Although the U.S. Government and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) do not classify Dihydrogen Monoxide as a toxic or carcinogenic substance (as it does with better known chemicals such as hydrochloric acid and saccharine), DHMO is a constituent of many known toxic substances, diseases and disease-causing agents, environmental hazards and can even be lethal to humans in quantities as small as a thimbleful.
Research conducted by award-winning U.S. scientist Nathan Zohner concluded that roughly 86 percent of the population supports a ban on dihydrogen monoxide. Although his results are preliminary, Zohner believes people need to pay closer attention to the information presented to them regarding Dihydrogen Monoxide. He adds that if more people knew the truth about DHMO then studies like the one he conducted would not be necessary.
A similar study conducted by U.S. researchers Patrick K. McCluskey and Matthew Kulick also found that nearly 90 percent of the citizens participating in their study were willing to sign a petition to support an outright ban on the use of Dihydrogen Monoxide in the United States."
If you want to know more about the problems of dihydrogen monoxide, vist http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
...sponsor some type of racing powered by fuel cells.
Like Off-Shore Power Boat Racing, or anything really.
That might kick in some more research dollars.
This was the most interesting topic I saw at this years Midwest Renewable Energy Fair
the process essentially can turn sugars and carbohydrates into either hydrogen or hydrocarbons.
Here are some relevant links:
http://www.virent.com/technology.htm
http://www.engr.wisc.edu/industry/atwork/9.html
Right! Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney are going to mandate every American buy 10 gallons of gas every week to keep the oil industry afloat as the price of oil goes to $30, $40, $50, $60, $70 a barrel and the US has to increase its share of world oil production from 25% to 40% to 50% to 75%.
The reality is that world oil production will peak this decade if it hasn't already.
That doesn't mean that oil will run out, only that there will be no increase in daily supply no matter what the demand. There have been no major oil fields discovered in the past decade, and the important oil fields were discovered more than 40 years ago.
Technology won't magically cause oil to require less energy to extract. The people extracting oil aren't complete morons, they have always extracted the oil that is easiest and cheapest to extract before moving on to the harder and more expensive to extract oil. Millions of people have been extracting oil over the past century and if there was a way to extract hard to extract oil cheaper than today, they would have found it by now because cheaper would mean more profit.
So the only way the oil industry can prevent higher prices motivating consumers to switch to some other, any other, form of energy is to get a mandate passed that requires Americans to buy 10 gallons of gas every week no matter what the price.
Failing that, there is nothing that the oil industry can do to prevent the decline of oil as an energy source.
What we as consumers have to hope for is a million small steps to cheaper hydrogen production. The likelihood of someone coming up with real cold fusion are real slim. Hydrogen as a fuel in 20 years is going to be more expensive than oil as a fuel is today, but the price of oil in 20 years will make hydrogen look cheap.
That's a patentable business model if I've ever heard one.
This stuff is the real danger...
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Turns out its far better to simply bury it. When you recycle it, first it has to be cleaned with highly caustic and dangerous chemicals which must be barrelled after their use (toxic waste).
When you melt it down, it requires alot of heat. The energy to create that heat has to come from somewhere - most often natural gas burners. So recycling glass actually consumes large amounts of fossil fuels.
And why not bury it? Glass is made from melted sand, something we're not likely to run out of soon, and doesn't harm the environment as you're simply putting the sand back into the earth.
Crushed glass makes an excellent landscaping material for constructing terrain like golf courses, then cover it with topsoil.
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Are there any studies which compare the costs of the various means of producing hydrogen? How do cracking of natural gas (and/or other petro products) or biomass derived methane compare to the extremely simple and direct method of using DC power from solar panels for electrolysis?
Since they will own the hydrogen stations as well. I think it was either shell or exxon that built the first one in cali.
So you can take a dump in your fuel tank and power your car!
The largest source of hydrogen today is the very same companies that sell you gas. You will still be filling your hydrogen car at a Shell station.
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You have to wonder about a politician who doesn't tell voters about his drunk driving conviction, because, he said, he didn't want to set a bad example for his children and then doesn't tell the Secret Service to keep them out of bars underage. Maybe he thought it went without saying. I guess you've got to be very precise when you've got pardoning powers.
Neither precision nor accuracy are Bush's strong suits.
converts bio-mass to fuel for futuristic cars? i KNOW i've see that somewhere before!!!
http://kered.org
there are still a lot of problems to be solved with hydrogen:
in the meantime, let's improve battery technology, fuel cells, and develop pebble bed nuclear reactor technology...
Methane has a higher energy density than hydrogen. This usually doesn't matter.
You can read more about this if you study rocket design. Hydrogen is lighter, but hydrocarbons allow you to use smaller fuel tanks for the same amount of energy. Methane is CH4, the lightest hydrocarbon.
Whether methane burns completely is a function of what's burning it. In a decently adjusted flame it burns to CO2 and water, with traces of carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide doesn't have much effect on energy efficiency -- remember that toxic levels are measured in parts per million.
Oh, and the material safety data sheet I just looked at doesn't mention any physiological effects other than displacing oxygen.
Behold the power of cheese!
Of course, implicit in this statement is the fact that it doesn't include all the other uses we have for biomass: food, timber, crops for animals, etc..
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Um, it isn't whether or not it's released in nature, it's whether or not it's used as fuel, i.e. burned. Duh.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
If platinum is such a rare metal, we should just take it from the necks of rappers.
I'm sure there's an untapped venue of platinum that would supply our needs for well over a decade or so...
- The tin (Sn) evaporates => vapour of tin => hydrogen no cleaner (is toxic as vapour of Pb).
- Without tin => there is not tin to catalyze => dont generate good hydrogen.
open4freeMDI states that the Air Car stores 90 litres of air at 300 bar. The stored energy is then approximately PVlog300 where P and V are the compressed pressure and volume. This amounts to about 15 MJ or 4.3 kWh. Divide this by the range of 300 km and we find a tractive force of 50 Newtons, meaning that the vehicle can be propelled by pushing it with one finger!
Unfortunately the Air Car is a fata morgana and a bottomless pit for investors. Clueless journalists - probably slept during physics class.
a delorian that runs on trashmatter and veggiematter that is stuffed into a little compactor, hmm this is only just around the corner, so when do we see the flying car models and hoverboards.
Hydrogen DOES turn CowboyNeal on! All he could talk about, with the Mars ice cap article, was how the test only detected hydrogen and how much he hopes it's just a big bubble of hydrogen under there.
Works with biomass and common metals, eh?
*visualizes CowboyNeal trying to make hydrogen by combining leftover pizza with some spare change*
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Ah yes, the omnipresent evil hippies. God, no. Save us. Ahhhh.
Before talking about hydrogen vehicles, you should read Robert L. Park's "Voodoo Science". It explains clearly why all this hype about hydrogen is just crap.
While the mass media has latched on to Hydrogen as being the solution to our dependence on OPEC and foreign oil, anyone who's got a basic understanding of science will tell you that shifting to a hydrogen economy will likely cause greater damage to the environment by *vastly* accelerating the greenhouse-effect.
Hydrogen is a solution to a political problem, not an environmental one!!!
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
It separates hydrgen from CO2. Where does the CO2 go? Seems like that detail was left out doesn't it?
Why don't we just bind the hydrogen to the carbon. Then instead of putting hydrogen IN carbon, we can hang hyrdrong ON carbon...getting greater densities of hydrogen. If we need more we can ust sorta 'string' the carbon atoms in a chain like sequence and just attach the carbon on the outside. I call it "hydrocarbon" technology...oh wait...
Yeah, that'll foster objectivity.
-B...
Pulled this off ens.com
Paper Mill Sludge Used to Create Fuel Cell Catalyst
MADISON, Wisconsin, June 27, 2003 (ENS) - Chemical and biological engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say they have found a cost effective nickel-tin catalyst that can replace the expensive metal platinum in a new process for making hydrogen fuel from plants.
Along with a second innovation that purifies hydrogen for use in hydrogen fuel cells, the catalyst offers new opportunities in a transition from a world economy based on fossil fuels to one that is based on hydrogen produced from renewable resources.
The research was published in this week's issue of the journal "Science," a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
James Dumesic, a professor of chemical and biological engineering, and graduate students George Huber and John Shabaker, tested more than 300 materials to find a nickel-tin-aluminum combination that reacts with oxygenated hydrocarbons derived from biomass to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide without emitting large amounts of unwanted methane.
"Platinum is very effective, but it's also very expensive," said Dumesic. "It's also problematic for large scale power production because platinum is already in demand for use as anode and cathode materials in hydrogen fuel cells."
The single step process uses temperature, pressure and a catalyst to convert hydrocarbons such as glucose, the energy source used by most plants and animals, into hydrogen, carbon dioxide and gaseous alkanes, with hydrogen constituting 50 percent of the products.
More refined molecules, such as ethylene glycol and methanol, are almost completely converted to hydrogen and carbon dioxide in the process. Because plants grown as fuel crops absorb the carbon dioxide released by the system, the process is greenhouse gas neutral.
Glucose is manufactured in the form of corn syrup, but it can also be made from sugar beets, or low cost biomass waste streams like paper mill sludge, cheese whey, or wood waste.
While hydrogen yields are higher for more refined molecules, Dumesic says glucose derived from waste biomass is likely to be the more practical candidate for cost effective power generation.
Because the Wisconsin process occurs in a liquid phase at low reaction temperatures, the hydrogen is made without vaporizing water.
That represents a major energy savings compared to ethanol production or conventional fossil fuel based hydrogen generation methods that require water to be boiled away, the scientists say.
The dramatic reduction in carbon monoxide emissions achieved by the team's new process overcomes a technical obstacle in the efficient operation of hydrogen fuel cells. Carbon monoxide poisons the electrode surfaces of the devices, hampering their reliability.
Work is being done on using carbon nanorods to store hydrogen (amongst others by the Renewable Energies Research Lab in Golden, CO).
That wouldn't be singly-bonded carbon nanorods, would it? Storing two hydrogens per carbon and an extra hydrogen on each end?
Maybe some really short ones? Like two carbons (ethane), three (propane), four (butane), five (pentane), six (hexane), seven (heptane), eight (octane), nine (nonane), etc.? Or even chains SO short they have only one carbon (methane)?
That would be really easy to handle, using the current infrastructure. Mixes of chains averaging around 7 or 8 in length would be liquid at normal environmental termpartures, yet have a high envough vapor pressure for easy ignition. They could be used with unconverted gasoline engines and distributed with the current infrastructure with little, if any, modification. (You could even rate their performance in an engine by comparing it with that of a mix of pure 8 and 7 carbon nanorod liquids. Give it a number - like the percentage by weight of 8-carbon rod carriers in the mixture. Call it an "octane" rating after the fully-loaded 8-carbon rods.)
Meanwhile, fully-loaded three- and four-carbon carriers, or mixes averaging about there, would be liquid under slight pressure but vaporize quickly when the pressure was relieved. They could be handled by the LP gas infrastructure, again with little or no modification. And the one- and two-carbon carriers would be gas even under significant pressure and could be handled in the natural-gas pipeline system.
A great idea!
B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
luckily we have hundreds of years to do it.
-pyrrho
Nice to see someone actually checking the references. According to MDI they compress 90 m3 of air to 90 litres at 300 bar. This is nowhere near what one would expect according to Boyles law (P*V = constant for isothermal compression). Assuming the 300 bar is correct, then either the figure for the initial volume or that for the compressed volume is incorrect. The initial volume was probably never actually measured because it is technically irrelevant. Therefore I used the values 300 bar and 90 litres in the formula P*V*log(pressure ratio).
Until an independent person verifies MDI's claims by actually driving the thing until it runs out of air I will stick to my conclusion that it is an elaborate hoax. However good looking the mock-ups are they still can't circumvent the time tested laws of physics.
I have taken a closer look at MDI's website. As far as I can make out (it's in French) they have one prototype which looks good but has conventional compressed air technology under the hood. It's actual measured range is a modest 7.22 km. By smart engineering they expect to raise that to 242 km. I prefer to call it wishful thinking; I'd be surprised if they manage to exceed 24.2 km.
YMMV!
A friend of mine, Eli Greenbaum, has been getting Hydrogen from algae for three years now, with no metals involved. He just starves them of O2 and they activate a dormant gene that produces a protein that synthesizes H2. See here for the details.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Uh Oh. Looks like we need another Timmy