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New Way to Make Hydrogen
zymano writes "Hydrogen is expensive to make and difficult to store. The most common way in making hydrogen is electrolyzing pure water. A new startup is trying a new way to make hydrogen. The process uses sodium which industry shuns because it generates sparks and heat when mixed with water. Signa has devised a way to mix sodium with silica gel or crystalline silicon to create a powder that essentially strips electrons from the sodium molecules in advance and stores them. When water is introduced, the chemical reaction proceeds calmly. The powder generates hydrogen efficiently. More than 9 percent of a kilogram of the powder gets converted to hydrogen and little energy is lost through heat."
Coal gas seems to be where the big boys are going.
Hence here in coal rich australia our rulers are mad keen on the "Hydrogen Economy".
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
The idea is not producing hydrogen with sodium as an energy source. There is no pure sodium whatsoever around, it's too reactive (same reason there is no hydrogen in the atmosphere).
So, instead of buying methanol cartridges, we would buy sodium sticks, put some water in a small tank in our laptop, and this would produce hydrogen and power for the machine.
Furthermore, the most common way of producing hydrogen is not electrolysis, but reforming of hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas), which is done on an industrial scale in any refinery.
The article itself has a good number of inaccuracies. For instance, other than the electrolysis thing, you read:
This is insane. The powder does not get converted to hydrogen, the water does. And still I'm afraid a unit error may be lurking.
The PEM fuel cells are not a way to store hydrogen, but a way to convert it to electricity; the solid oxide fuel cells will never be used in vehicles, since they are expensive, running at temperatures up to 1000 degrees, good only for large-scale plants, and brittle. And they take 8 hours to start up, and they can start up only so many times before they start cracking (about ten).
Oh my, did they know that hydrogen is extremely reactive, and will burn with oxygen at the first occasion? You don't even need a spark, all it takes is the static electricity of a windy day. CO2 accumulates, hydrogen would disappear rapidly.
Of course it is. It contains energy. There is no such thing as an energy carrier that does not contain some sort of danger. It would not be much of an energy carrier if it were inert. So, gasoline burns, hydrogen burns, nuclear goes bad big time, methanol burns, and lithium batteries explode if you hammer them or if they are produced with poor standards.
Solid oxide fuel cells do not require a catalyst. They are the only ones that do not, since they operate at high temperatures. Assuming the article meant SOFC.
Common misconception, hydrogen costs about 0.8 euro per gasoline liter equivalent: in Europe that's already way convenient. It's the infrastructure that's missing.
Alkaline metals being ignored? Of all the bullshit... they might not be C, O or even Al, but most know sodium better than technetium, praseodimiun or some transition metal forgotten somewhere in the limbo of rare earths.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Obviously the emergency jerrycan is a technology too complex and difficult to arrange compared to a simple sodium store, water tank, reformer, purifier and additional carburetor...face it guys, most of the easily led idiot investors lost their cash in the dot-com bubble.
BTW there is an existing technology for producing "safe" sodium involving mixing it with mercury to form amalgam. This has been around for many years (it is the basis of early plants for producing sodium hydroxide from salt.) It has not revolutionised fuel cells or led to a practical mobile phone fuel cell. So explain why this should be any different?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Take all claims by United Nuclear (aka United Nyuck Nyuck Nyucklear) with a grain of salt. It is run by the infamous Bob Lazar Whose claims to fame include reverse-engineering alien spacecraft and working with their power source "element 115"(which doesn't exist in this part of the galazy) and advanced degrees in physics from MIT and CalTech which no paperwork can be found on. His old site has got some "interesting" info on the alien craft.
They are also using solar power to create the hydrogen - they have an experimental plant in the Mojave desert, here in California.
The cool thing is that this is a functional, buildable product created by a major car manufacturer. As soon as the hydrogent fuel supply infrastructure exists, they could start cranking these out more or less immediately. If a driver gets stuck in an area where no H2 fueling stations exist, it runs just fine on old-fashioned gasoline. For more information, see their website.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Coming from a country where a sizeable percentage of energy is generated by wind mills..
- We don't put them right next to places where migrating birds are known to stop. There are no problems with dead birds - they avoid the mills, but it wouldn't do to upset them.
- LF and interference; They are noisy yes, but the LF/interference thing is tinfoil-hat stuff.
- They are ugly; yup. So are smokestacks.
Anyway. Trials are underway to stuff carbon back into the drilling holes instead of releasing it into the air. That shuld keep oil and natural gas CO2 emmission close to zero for power plants.
Great post, I was skeptical to start with, so I stopped reading TFA shortly after "The key is sodium" statement. IIRC (and I bow to your chemistry knowlage), isn't sodium created in commercial quantities by melting salt? Doesn't the molten salt also create equal quantities of chlorine gas? Is this anymore envriomentally friendly than mixing "Draino" with aluminum and water to produce hydrogen?
PS: You're right, I've never heard of technetium or praseodimiun. When I saw the quote "That side of the periodic table people tend to ignore", I got a mental picture of a bunch of whitecoats (ala "The Farside" cartoons). They were hudled over a poster size periodic table that was spread out on a lab bench. None of them could complete the formula scrawled on the whiteboard because Eric was leaning on the Alkaline metals and nobody noticed them.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This thread is so puerile.
Seriously though, this whole thread is refreshingly optimistic. Let me be the pessimist: it isn't just inefficiency that will stop the advent of this new technology. The oil industry is keeping a lot of powerful people rich, who could give a flip about anything new or better. It also gives a seemingly great reason for the US to exert its global muscle.
Now I want to respond seriously to the Anonymous Coward who frowns on the use of the word pedantic. Some of us have a vocabulary, something that's good for self expression. It does not make us pricks, we are not speaking with condescension (well you know, some of us). I really get riled when someone lashes out at another because they say "whom" or because they don't otherwise contribute to what is, in my opinion, the language being dumbed down.
If the Family Guy can get a new word out to the masses, then I applaud it (moreso). Screw you, consciousness shrinker.