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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
Wisconsin team engineers gas from biomass
Apparently I wasn't the only one to eat Taco Bell last night...
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
yeah, and the buggy-whip manufacturers got screwed back in the day. As did the coach-builders, blacksmiths, stables, etc. So, they adapted (coach-builders built auto coaches, blacksmiths became mechanics, stables became hotels) or died.
That's capitalism for 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.
could it produce 1.21 gigawatts? Great Scott!
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
Matter-antimatter reactions give you 100% of the mass converted into energy.
Gamma ray energy, that is.
Note also that antimatter annihiliates any matter it touches.
Core problem 1 is how to produce antimatter cheaply, and in enough quantity. Right now, it's only produced in particle accelerators.
Core problem 2 is how to transport it. If it's charged, you can use a magnetic bottle, but if it's not....
Core problem 3 is how to change the gamma rays into something useful. Gamma rays, you may recall, only interact with heavy metals (e.g. Pb) enough to really consider it. (Sure, they interact with, say, DNA, but not very often, compared to the number that get through unaffected). And even in things like Pb, it's only attenuated not stopped. The gamma rays might excite an electron, but that'll fall back to ground state, giving another gamma ray. It might interact with the nucleus, warming the substance a very little bit, but that's it. We don't have a good way of converting gamma rays into, say, heat to provide steam for traditional turbines.
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Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
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))))
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'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...
Argh but I get tired of people using the Hindenburg as proof hydrogen is dangerous.
The Hindenburg burned because of the paint that was used, which is chemically similar to rocket fuel.
Hydrogen burns with an invisible flame. Watch the footage - it's not the hydrogen that's the big problem.
If I had to be in a car crash, I'd prefer a hydrogen car to do it in. Gas tank ruptures, hydrogen floats off. Gasoline lays in puddles underneath me.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I did Chemistry at university but it's been a while....
Probably before the catalyst element corrodes too much that it needs to be replaced, as it's efficiency drops too much.
(most)Catalysts work by letting chemicals bind to them temporarily, before the chemicals go on to complete their reaction. In this case the biomass breaks into smaller chunks when it bind onto the catalyst and then the chunks are reduced further to produce the Hydrogen.
In a perfect catalyst, the catalyst would remain unchanged after the process. However some of the reaction products could get left on the surface of the catalyst (which physically blocks that bit of the surface ), also the surface could be deformed at a microscopic level (ie the atoms of the catalyst get moved about) which stops the catalyst from working as the chemicals are unable to bind to the surface.
Or it could just be catalyst in the EU hitting the working hour limit....
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
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.
After reading the article(may need a subscription to view), I'm happy to answer your question.
/. where I actually know the people involved. Way cool.
The catalytic activity degrades over time - but stabilizes at 72% of initial activity after about 48 hours of use. They published data out to 60 hours of use. (since I eat lunch with John & George on a semi-regular basis, I can find out Monday how far they actually tested, but for now that's the best I can tell you.)
So if you're wondering why the activity degrades over time, that's an easier and harder question to answer. It's easy, since it's one of a couple of likely culprits - impurities in the feed stream can poison (ie, react with) the catalyst; the catalyst might physically break down over time, the metals in the catalyst might rearrange themselves over time (like tin on the catalyst surface might migrate to the sub-surface), etc. The hard part is figuring out which one (or how many) of these things are actually happening.
And as an aside, I can't believe it's a story in
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...
Behold the power of cheese!