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Creating Hydrogen With (Very) Hot Water
carbonman writes "NYTimes is reporting that a public-private research team will announce on Monday that they have discovered a new technique to produce pure hydrogen that is far more efficient than conventional methods. The advance could be a significant development in attempts to realize the dream of the hydrogen economy in taking gasoline-powered vehicles off the road, and without releasing carbon dioxide emissions that are linked to climate change. It does, however, require the use of advanced high-temperature nuclear reactors, none of which have been built on a production scale before."
swiftstream adds a link to the same story at the no-reg Indianapolis Star, and summarizes the method as "electrolysis of very, very hot water."
Don't they mean steam?
Is it just me or water can't be very very hot? At about 100 degrees Celcius, it vaporize... are they doing electrolysis on hot vapor? If so, can their tech be called Vaporware? :)
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Why not put the nuclear power plant way out in the boonies (i.e., no one's back yard) and run pipelines to where hydrogen is needed?
I have nothing against nuclear power, until efficient solar power comes along, as long as the nuclear power minefield can be navigated.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
...perfect for espresso machines.
One would be better to invent mini-nuclear reactors than introduce yet another step in the creation, storage, and use of energy.
I suggest you read Slashdot
I think the reality is that there are so many unecissary regulations in the states, that nuclear power is impossible - and likely will be for a long time. I myself wish I had enough money to buy a ship and put a nuclear reactor on it out in international waters and sell safe and simple hydrogen back to the mainland. It would also be a cool way to reach the next generation of liberty - I mean we haven't really seen any new methods implemented to improve individual freedom and liberty (especially economic) in government in nearly 200 years. I wish I could start a nation at sea.
So...how long before there's a lawsuit resulting from a scalding burn while at the drive-thru fill up?
Article Link, Sans first born
Once you've got the nuclear reactor in your car, why bother with all this hydrogen business? You've got all the energy you need from the reactor itself.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Does that mean they will be showing their privates in public? Are there any females on this public-private team? If so, then I am there for the 'unveiling'!
I had so many unwanted daemons on my machine, I had to hire a priest to cast them all out.
It has been known for some time that blowing hot steam across coke results in hydrogen, which is how most commercial hydrogen is made.
Here's the reaction
I thought of this when someone first told me about fuel cells. To anyone familiar with conventional thermal cycles and the basics of thermodynamics, the approach is obvious. Thermal cycles take advantage of thermal energy gradients. That such a potential could be exploited with fuel cells seems to be an obvious extention. Hot water is easier to separate than cold water, duh! So you heat the water up, separate it and then combine it in a cold fuel cell. The difference is energy you can use but the devil is in the details. It seems easier than using a turbine but you'd want one of those too if you can't extract all of the heat in electrolysis.
I'm glad someone is finally working on it. People are so slow. I expect the petroleum and coal industries to step in and kill it before anyone can use it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Why the hell not? I'm sure you're just another zealot who thinks these fat cats are all about the oil. But they're all about making money. So if this became a viable way of producing a medium to transport cheap energy, why wouldn't they want to get their hands on this?
They're not oil companies! They're energy companies.
Hmm, nuclear reactions? Isn't the point to get hydrogen to be used with fusion(w/ helium3) without any byproducts? If you need to start using nuclear reactions, this still isn't a 'great' way to get hydrogen. I still believe using solarpanels and using electrolysis for getting hydrogen is still the best way. No CO2, no nuclear waste... Well that's just my opinion...
Fusion of helium-3 would be divine. Pity there isn't much here on Earth. (The moon is another matter.) It also usually costs hundred of dollars per litre. Bear in mind that there are several other reaction paths to fusion that don't require He-3. They aren't as ideal - just more practical.
Solar panels have their place, but they're never going to produce the amount of hydrogen needed for even a single nation's infrastructure. Even if solar panels were much more efficient, electrolysis itself isn't very energy efficient.
(As an aside, I was pleasantly suprised to run across an article about using good old Stirling engines & an array of mirrors to generate power from the sun - at higer efficiencies than panels and at costs comparable to fossil fuels. Have a read)
Now, on to the point of the story. Basically, some of the Generation IV nuclear reactor designs* can be used to produce lots of hydrogen, more or less as a byproduct of their operation. (Because of the extreme temperatures) So the fact that you've suddenly got the means for a hydrogen economy is a side-benefit.
Gen. IV reactor designs are cleaner, safer, more efficient, and generally smaller than their clunky old (current) counterparts. Yes, they are still fission. And while MOX reactors (which compose some of the designs) have questions about fuel reuse, a bona fide fusion reactor can be used to re-enrich spent fission fuel. (ie, blanket of uranium around reaction chamber, etc.) Fusion lets you make fission clean, or as close to it as possible.
Why is that important? Because no one is going to initially drop the trillion or so dollars to build the first commercially viable fusion reactor, when and if one is ever designed. ITER itself will be just a stepping stone, if it ever actually gets built. In the mean time, we'll still be fissioning away...
*Because of irrational fear and paranoia in the USA, most commercial reactors are Generation I or II. Not much has changed since the 70s. Nuclear can be dangerous, but it generally isn't and needn't be. It's debatable whether government run power plants would be any better, but it scares the hell out of me that our reactors in the USA are run as cheaply as they can possibly get away with. Capitalism is great, but you just can't try to undercut safety.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
If you were being serious about that statement your stupidity is showing. Hydrogen is less explosive than gasoline, and unless you can heat it to a temperature of a few million degrees or so you won't see hydrogen exploding like at bikini atol.
BTW most of the people who died on the Hindenburg were burned by DIESEL FUEL, not hydrogen! (or they were killed by the sudden stop at then end of a fall).
The people that run the Country rely on oil as the controlling mechanism - the middle east problems have nothing to do with terrorism - but everything to do with oil.
The power people OWN the oil. If there was anything that started to interfere with that mechanism, then you will see Government refusal to grant licences to build facilities etc to produce an alternate energy supply. Mark my words.
Think of the oil people as a big version of MS.
Theres only two compelling reasons to abandon the current energy paradigm. 1) A new energy source. It has to be so much better than the last one that the profits will outweigh the investment within 5 years. 2) The old energy runs out.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Generation IV Nuclear Reactors
Very high-temperature gas reactors. These are graphite-moderated, helium-cooled reactors, based on substantial experience . The core can be built of prismatic blocks such as the Japanese HTTR and the GTMHR under development by General Atomics and others in Russia, or it may be pebble bed such as the Chinese HTR-10 and the PBMR under development in South Africa, with international partners. Outlet temperature of 1000C enables thermochemical hydrogen production via an intermediate heat exchanger, with electricity cogeneration, or direct high-efficiency driving of a gas turbine (Brayton cycle). There is some flexibility in fuels, but no recycle. Modules of 600 MW thermal are envisaged
This isn't really correct - although pretty much all the power reactors in the USA are water cooled (primarily due to the Navy's interest is nuclear propulsion), there are plenty of gas cooled reactors elsewhere. Most of our (Britain's) nuclear generating capacity is from either AGR (Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors) or Magnox (named after the Mg-alloy fuel can) reactors, both of which use carbon dioxide as the coolant.
So, the technology may be new to the USA, but there's are wealth of knowledge on designing and running these reactors elsewhere in the world.
Oh yes, they're arguably quite a bit safer than PWRs as well!
I assume you also have touched a cup of microwaved H2o and had it instantly boil over on your hand.
It's an interesting apparent contridiction because the water seems already hot enough to boil, yet it does't until the container is moved.
Anyone care to explain why this is?
To vaporize, water needs something to form a steam bubble around. Coffee grounds, sugar, or ridges on a metal pot will work for this. But, if you heat up pure water in a smooth ceramic cup in the microwave, there isn't anything to induce it to form steam. Thus, when you spoon that instant coffee in, it explodes.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
While I agree that nuclear power is dangerous, and the waste products are a long term issue, many people (myself included) view it as the lesser of two evils.
Ignore, for a moment, advanced passive power generation and fusion power. What do we have now to power our civilization? Fossil fuels and nuclear energy. If we could reduce our power consumption, or rely more on existing passive generators (like solar and hydro), then we would need less actively generated power. We could never reduce our power requirements to zero without our civilization collapsing (see Dyson's theories, as well as conservation of energy and thermodynamics). This means that we're still stuck with waste products, nuclear or otherwise.
Given only those two choices, I choose nuclear. I recognize the risks and long term hazards of it, but it is still a better alternative to climate change and air pollution. Moreover, in the long term, fossil fuels will run out far sooner than fissile fuel. My hope is that we get working fusion power, and alternative energy sources, but in the meantime nuke plants are the better route.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
True, but water vapour condenses out of the atmosphere as precipitation. There are hyrdological and carbon cycles that dictate equilibrium for greenhouse gases.
We actually wouldn't have a problem with carbon dioxide emissions if they were a part of the carbon cycle. Biodiesle would not contribute to the greenhouse effect, since the amount of CO2 released and the amount absorbed by the plants producing the fuel would be in equilibrium. However by burning trapped fossil material, which has been out of the carbon cycle and buried for millions of years, we are altering the environment.
Carbon dioxide is normal in the air; animals emit it, plants consume it. Add more total carbon to the system, by depleting an ancient carbon sink, and the net level of CO2 in the air rises. Since the hydrogen you get from electrolysis comes from water, you aren't adding to the net levels of water vapour. For every ounce of water you're releasing into the hydrological cylce, you're taking an ounce out at the other end to get the hydrogen in the first place. No disruption in the hydrological cycle, no warming.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Basically, yes.
This system works on the heat production to heat the water. So hydro or wind wouldn't work efficiently. Other systems that use the steam cycle to power turbines probably would.
Using a hydrocarbon based power plant would be defeating the purpose, besides, there's more efficient methods of making hydrogen from hydrocarbonds than even hot water electrolysis.
The mirror type solar power plant might work too, but they cost an order of magnitude more to make per megawatt than a nuclear plant. And they're not manintenance free once built.
I don't read AC A human right
Only 900 plants needed!
radioactive waste, which is not only poisonous
So isn't the stuff that comes out of a coal plant's stacks. Except the nuclear stuff is safely in a pool, rather than in the air that I'm breathing.
but a geopolitical crisis
Just because it's a political "crisis" doesn't mean that it's ultimatly a geological crisis. There are ways to handle the waste.
And factoring in the energy to build these reactors reduces their efficiency
The build energy argument can be used for every technology. Heck, Solar and Wind both have much higher build costs per megawatt.
How about biomass reactors that generate hydrogen from agricultural waste, which are neither radioactive nor wasteful?
Research is progressing on this option too. May the best technology win. Changing economics as well as scientific developments will favor one or the other depending on the situation. People in my area often have multiple fuel heating systems. We'll heat with everything. Wood, Oil, Corn, Electric, and Natural Gas. Price of electricity goes up? Switch to Gas. Gas/Oil goes up? Use electric. Are you really cheap? Chop down some trees. Or buy some dry feed corn and burn that.
I don't read AC A human right
Nuclear companies have nuclear power reactors to put out hydrogen (as a byproduct) ready and good to go, and have had them ready for quite some time. The hold up, in America, is that people are afraid of Nuclear Power, but in a few years as coal rises in cost (it will this winter for example--the cost of the coal has tripled on the East Coast of the U.S., but not the West Coast), there will be a demand for new reactors. However, the reactors that are desired are high energy steam generators, which are NOT the hydrogen power byproduct generators.
The reason being is because they are still fine tuning these hydrogen byproduct generators to not waste so much energy actually creating the hydrogen (costs energy to split from the other molecules, such as H2O), which is a big concern for the power companies, as they want to maximize profit and that means not wasting energy. Sure, you have the hydrogen eventually, but a lot of the energy is just lost in the conversion process.
You know, I've never seen a post answered by its own sig before ...
No one person shoulders the cost of "total destruction of our environment", it is spread out among everyone. Yet, in your scenario, one person (or corporation or government) shoulders the entire cost, and thus risk. There will be many large corporations looking for this to fail, so you've got your work cut out for you. Until you can find a rich saviour, this won't ever get off the ground.
All we can do is point out the reasons why consumers want this, and the reward/risk ratio will change as consumers will demand it. The risk goes down (the competing energy sources won't be able to cause failure at this point), the reward goes up (there are consumers just waiting to empty their pockets into this rather than traditional fuels), and there will be competitors looking to get their own pieces of this pie.
This, by the way, is exactly how the capitalist "invisible hand" is supposed to work: consumers demand something, whether for purely selfish reasons (materialist), or for purely environmental reasons (it's a cause they're willing to pay for), or for any other reason. Point is, consumers demand what they want, and someone will eventually come along to give it to them. Thus, the key is to drive demand, in order to drive supply.
Hydrogen has about 120MJ/kg of energy (lower heat value). They're saying that it either makes 300 MW of electricity or 2.5 kg/sec of hydrogen, which would imply 100% efficiency for electricty->hydrogen (2.5 kg/sec is the same as 300MW).
I wonder if they're just making up numbers, as 100% efficiency seems unreasonable good.
Has everyone forgotten the Three Mile Island and Hindenburg accidents?
Hmm... an incident (TMI) that happened over a quarter century ago? Another that happened 67 years ago? We've come a long way since these incidents. That's what progress is all about; living and learnign and USING this new knowledge for a better system.
And how is the hydrogen fuel to be transported?
With the use of the Texaco Ovonic Hydrogen Systems metal hydride containment units. It creates a stable form of hydrogen. The US DoT has already approved the system.
I'm afraid we'd be inviting disaster and a sitting target for terrorists.
These same circumstances exist today. We're not creating a new hazard.
(nucular for Dubya types)
This is a fairly wise remark from someone who seems to have posted before they sat and really given any thought on the subject. This is what's called a knee jerk reaction.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
yay! so we can still say our cars only put water in the air... but making the hydrogen results in nuclear waste
Which is solid, containable, and produced at centralized facilities which can be scrutinized easily, instead of being pumped out the back of millions of individual cars straight into the atmosphere every day.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
At the levels of CO2 that we're putting into the atmosphere today, it's likely that biological sinks could reduce CO2 to preindustrial levels in about 200 years, but if we continue to burn fossil fuels for the next two centuries, the biological and short-term chemical sinks will have been saturated.
Based on what we know about the slow (geological) sinks, it could well take on the order of a few million years to get back to preindustrial levels of CO2 from the levels we expect if we burn up all the known coal reserves (estimated at around 250 years from now at current rates of consumption).
Therefore, I am much more concerned with CO2 emissions than with nuclear waste.
I doubt that a reactor will put out enough fuel to cover a city, or even two gas stations for that matter.
There's an estimated 360 million gallons of gasoline consumed daily in the US. This plant will produce 400,000 kilos. This may not be enough for a truly large city but it's more than you think it is. It's certainly more than two gas stations worth. To put it into a bit more of a prospective; a gas tanker (semi truck type) holds 9,000 gallons of gas.
We're gonna need a bigger source than that if we want to use hydrogen.
Sure, it's not a singular solution but fuel creation today isn't a singular solution either. It's actually encouraging that we're going to have so many potential sources. If we weren't so reliant on our current sources of oil we'd probably not be in the situation we're in today. Also consider that in all reality fuel cell is a long way off. Is it still going to take a kilo of hydrogen to produce the same energy as a gallon of gas? doubtful. And this plant, if it takes off, will be modified and output will likely be increased.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Even a tiny nuclear reactor contains more radioactive material than the Hiroshima bomb. Blowing one up with a truckload of conventional explosives may not kill a lot of people, but surely will contaminate a large area for a long time.
One of the "problems" with so called dirty-bombs fashioned from reactor material is that you really can't kill a lot of people. The effect will be mostly psychological.
Thankfully, the material inside anything but a research reactor is very low enrichment. Say 3-10% at most. To make a real Nuke, you need 85-95% enrichment. And a pretty sophisticated bomb design - you can't just pack it with TNT and hope.
So what are we left with?
If you just blow the thing up: really, really deadly stuff (like radioactive Xenon, etc) has a short half-life or otherwise quickly clears out. What you're left to deal with are several chunks of uranium. They're harmful, but only localy. The area can be closed off and decontaminated. Few people will die.
If you want a much bigger disbursion: You have to first grind the nasty stuff down into a fine powder. Very risky to do for a terrorist, even with lots of fancy equipment that likely wouldn't have. When you blow it up, it spreads the dust over a much larger area. The downside is that the dose to any indiviual is going to be much lower. You'll make some people sick, sure, but you won't kill many people.
This is all Good For Us(tm).
A much greater threat is theft of radioisotopes from hospitals, etc, which are relatively unguarded. Nothing like putting "deadly radioisotopes" in a town's water supply to comepletely freak out the general populace.
Which is what they* want.
*insert your favorite evil terrorist group here.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
You can perform the same trick the other direction. If you carefully cool a cup of water using the right container, you can get it a fair amount below 0C at normal pressure. Throw in a grain of salt, and the whole thing violently freezes, sometimes shattering the container.
Phase changes just require some sort of trigger, often a tiny bit of turbulent flow around a sharp corner, scratch, or any local disturbance. The further the fluid is above or below its expected boiling or freezing point, the more unstable the situation is and the smaller the trigger needed.
With standard household stuff, superheating or supercooling water by 5C-10C is doable. The shattered glass trick is tougher because you need to supercool water about 15C-20C to get sufficiently violent freezing. When the fridge compressor is running, it usually generates enough vibration to trigger the phase change before the water is cold enough.
If this is released into the environment, then we're dealing with another greenhouse gas (water vapor).
It is far worse than one would imagine. You can read more about the dangers here about the byproduct of hydrogen combustion. Truly sobering....were they to put these in automobiles, they would generate a key component of acid rain.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I heard they designed a car engine which could run off of silly conspiracy theories, but the Boy Scouts and Knights Templars suppressed it.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
No, you're not the only one who's worried, but you also don't have a clue. TMI was 25 years ago, presumably we've learned a few things about nuclear power since then. Also let's look at what happened at TMI, there was an accident, and the reactor containment worked. End of story.
As for the Hindenburg, puhleeeze, could you pull your frickin head out of your ass for one frickin second here? Firstly do you have any natural gas powered appliances in your house (stove, dryer, gas fireplace, furnace)? If you do then you might be shocked to know that they burn methane gas, which is made largely of gasp hydrogen. Has your house exploded yet? No? OK. Let's also look at the fact that recent analyses (you can find one here) have shown that while the hydrogen in the Hindenburg contributed to the fire the proximate cause was the doping on the dirigible's fabric skin, which was composed of aluminum, iron oxide and cellulose nitrate, all of which are flammable. Hell, NASA has been handling liquid hydrogen for nearly 50 years, how many rockets have they had explode because of an accident with it? Not any that I can think of (the Challenger went down because the Solid Rocket Boosters, which contain aluminum powder similar to that used to coat the skin of the Hindenburg, burned through).
Finally, if you want to see some really nasty and horrific burns just head down to your local hospital burn ward and check out the guys who have burned themselves with gasoline. That's right, gasoline, that stuff you pump into your car every day is really, really, really flammable and nasty and if you get some burning gasoline on your skin you're pretty much guaranteed at least a second degree burn, if not worse. Yet despite this we manage to fuel millions of cars which drive millions of miles every day without having too many flaming wrecks along our roads and highways.
As for the threat from terrorism we've already seen what terrorists can do. Did we stop flying airplanes? No, we just put largely ineffective security measures in place. But if a terrorist ever tries to hijack a plane with a box cutter again he's going to find himself head first up to his shoulders in that blue liquid they put in the airplane toilets while hordes of angry passengers pound that box cutter right up his ass. Terrorism is a risk, but it really pisses me off how many people just throw it up as an excuse not to do something rather than as a risk that needs to be taken into account as part of the overall cost / benefit analysis of a specific action.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
when you spoon that instant coffee in, it explodes
instant explosion upon spooning eh?
sounds like most guys on slashdot.
-judging another only defines yourself
polar h20 molecules are flipped or spun as the microwave passes by them. because the em field emparts energy into the molecules, they can contain enough energy to phase shift. Think about covering a gym floor with basket balls so that none are touching. Then somehow make every ball spin at 10000 rpm. At first the balls would continue to sit on the floor spinning really fast. They have a ton of energy, but are still floor balls. Then a single ball is nudged into it's neighbor. Suddenly a chain reaction would happen with basketballs flying everywhere as the spin energy is converted into movement energy.
same thing happens in a microwave to h20, or any other free floating polar molecule. h20 just happen to absorb the microwave em very efficiently.
Here's a nice Sandia link that makes it absolutely clear that even a small-scale solar thermal installation can produce temperatures comparable to those in "nuclear explosions" the article here is only talking about 2000C. This solar furnace is used to test the "failure thresholds of high temperature ceramic and refractory materials." So why in the hell is a nuclear power plant the only option to produce the heat they need to use with their fancy ceramic filter? No doubt the solar furnace in that photo produces temperatures far in excess of what their ceramic filter can even tolerate.