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Fuel Cell Powered Scooter
!Freeky2BGeeky writes "In an article by Fuel Cell Works, Samsung Engineering announced that they've developed a Hydrogen-based scooter which can go 140Km on 6 liters of hydrogen. The downside? The process that produces the hydrogen uses a component in short supply."
The primary feat of this machine is the way the hydrogen is stored on board. For that they use sodium borohydride, which is in short supply.
The Shell station by my house already sells hydrogen at the pumps.
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http://www.csnews.com/csnews/reports_analysis/f
Where do I order one of these again?
I'm not a chemistry buff, but this lecture from a Perdue chemistry prof describes the discovery of sodium borohydride, the compound used to generate hydrogen for this thing.
Just for clarification. Quote: The newly-developed technology uses a water-based solution of sodium borohydride, made from sodium borate, to produce hydrogen gas.
That means they put the hydrogen "into" sodium borate, creating sodium borohydride. A catalytic reaction on board the vehicle then "produces" the hydrogen. Stanford has a nice PDF on using sodium borohydride for hydrogen storage.
The question is not that important. Sodium borohydride (NaBH4) is made up of sodium (quite common, as in sodium chloride), hydrogen (common too) and boron is fairly common too, according to this link. The fact you don't find steel, carbon fiber or many modern materials in nature does not mean it is a problem. NaBH4 is supposed to be a carrier of energy, not a source: it is converted to sodium borate during use, and this is later regenerated to sodium borohydride.
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From what I could gather, the regeneration process involves electrolyzing the molten salts. This is not an easy or convenient process and has tons of problems, but it is doable on an industrial basis.
This chemical, Sodium Borohyrdate, is right up there with Sodium Hydride and Lithium Aluminum Hydride insamuch as it is a tremendously powerfull base. This stuff makes industrial strength liquid Drano look like water, and the only nice thing about the Boron compound is that it "supposedly" requires the presence of a catalyst before it explodes, ostensibly making it much more friendly to use. NaH and LiAlH are extremely dangerous and are used in organic synthesis, for example to turn something like vegetable oil directly into something like octane. Reactions are carried out in an ice water bath and in very small amounts.
In all practicality, this chemical is probably a bit too dangerous for public energy storage and transmission. Consider if your car ran on concentrated Nitric Acid instead of gasoline... its a similar scenario. Calcuim Carbide (produces Acetylene) is probably a lot safer than this stuff IMO.
Just like Hydrazine and Dinitrogen Pentoxide, theoretically they make an awesome medium for energy storage; however, untrained people really shouldn't be allowed in the same building as that stuff.
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Mod or teach the world some chemistry. hmmm teach some chemistry I think.
When it comes to chemicals please please please don't think have a knee jerk reaction and claim that all chemicals are evil and sent by satan himself.
Everything around you is a chemical so to say you are scared of chemicals is pretty stupid. Further more to say a chemical is bad or nasty is pretty silly as you are attributing a bunch of atoms a human personality.
Sodium Borohydride is a faily commonly used chemical and for the most part it is completely safe. There are no really special handling requirements (for lab scale use) although if memory serves it's generally best not to get it wet but even then it's generally only a fairly quck reaction. I'm not saying that you can eat the stuff just correctly managed it's safe.
There are a few really dangerous chemicals such as nerve gasses that require very special treatment and you really don't want to be messing with them but most chemicals are quite inert.
To give you some perspective have a look at the MSDS data for cadmium. You no doubt use NiCad batteries and I think you will be somewaht shocked. Do you have a mercury thermometer. That mercury is dangerous stuff. How about metholated spirit. If it was a toss up between eating 1g of sodium borohydride or drinking 1ml of meths I would probably go with the sodium borohydride and yet you probably splash meths about.
Ok that's enough chemistry for one day.
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