Hydrogen Stored in Safe High Density Pellets

sunbeam60 writes "A group of scientists are going to present their breakthrough in hydrogen storage this Wednesday. In contrast to previous storage mechanisms, this method binds hydrogen to a pellet which is completely safe to handle at room temperature. While bound in this medium no hydrogen loss occurs, enabling hydrogen to be stored cheaply for indefinite periods. When needed, the extraction of hydrogen is relatively simple. The pellets exceed all criteria set by the US Department of Energy for 2015, enabling a car to drive more than 500 km on a 50 L tank (13 MJ/l)"

Comments

How does it come out?

[BiAthlon]

Ok, so I read the article and it's fairly light. The question I have is how do we get the hydrogen back out?

Re:How does it come out?

[dsginter]

The question I have is how do we get the hydrogen back out?

The linked article calls the stuff "AMMINEX" which sounds like yet another ammonia hydrogen storage scheme. I won't comment on their implementation but others have failed here.

The next problem facing hydrogen as an energy carrier (NOTE - never use the term "energy source" when referring to hydrogen because it only carries energy that has to come from somewhere else) is the fuel cell, which requires costly noble metal catalysts (i.e. - platinum). The whole electrolysis process is highly alkaline so conventional metals are quickly fouled.

Re:How does it come out?

[ikkonoishi]

It seems that they use a catalyst to break the solid down, and release the hydrogen gas.

At least according to this <sarcasm> informative diagram</sarcasm>

Re:How does it come out?

[insert cool name]

Ok, so I read the article and it's fairly light. The question I have is how do we get the hydrogen back out?

According to the diagram on their site, it uses some unamed catalyst.

Re:How does it come out?

[Vengeance]

Of course, some technologies, such as the hydrogen engines BMW is planning to release shortly, are basically conventional internal combustion designs optimized to use hydrogen as a fuel. These avoid the problems which can arise trying to make small, efficient and reliable fuel cells.

Re:How does it come out?

[rben]

There is no problem with noble metal catalysts for fuel cells if they use internal combustion rather than fuel cells. Internal combustion seems to be the current track, how else would we have big loud cars?

The real issue is still global warming and environmental effects. H2O is a greenhouse gas, just like CO2. H2O also has more immediate effects on local weather. If we switch over to hydrogen powered autos, we can count on more foggy roadways in the future.

OTOH, there could be some interesting benefits. Imagine the whole stretch of desert along U.S. Highways turning green because of the new abundance of water... (Not really a realistic scenerio, though.)

Finally, as others have pointed out, Hydrogen merely carries the energy, you still have to generate the energy by burning fossil fuels, running nuclear reactors, setting up windmills, or some other means, and how that energy generation is done will determine the effect on the climate.

Katrina should have been a wake-up call for all of us. While it's unknown and probably unknowable if Katrina was the result of global warming, it's pretty certain that as the oceans heat up, we'll get more Katrina-sized storms. We've got to take action to stop the greenhouse warming now.

You can take action by conserving energy and pushing your legislative representatives towards greener policies. You can plant trees to soak up CO2. (Just don't burn them for firewood later!)

Re:How does it come out?

[RingDev]

Actually there is new technology in the fuel cell market that uses a significantly cheaper polimer based panels. But internal combustion is still an option.

Also, even if we are getting hydrogen by using energy created at centralized coal processing plants we are still creating less polution then everyone running gas. And with distributed power generation on the rise, people could be creating their own hydrogen by using excess power generated by solar roofing during the day.

-Rick

Re:How does it come out?

[rich_r]

h2 0? a greenhouse gas? You sure?

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

NOTE - never use the term "energy source" when referring to oil-derived products because it only carries energy that has to come from somewhere else.

Re:How does it come out?

[AndersOSU]

I think that the catalyst problem is more solvable than the more fundamental problem of hydrogen source. It bothers me to no end when people tout hydrogen fuel as pollution free. It's not. You only move the source of pollution away from the highly visible tail pipe.

There are two sources of hydrogen, electrolyzing water, and stripping it from hydrocarbons. Both of these sources suffer severe drawbacks.

Electrolyzing water is short sighted at best. The second law of thermodynamics (which we obey in this house!) dictates that it will always take more energy to get the free hydrogen that you can ever get back in a fuel cell. This means that it will take a LOT of power to supply a hydrogen economy which means new power plants, which means burning more natural gas and coal. The single best leveragabile solution to a hydrogen economy is new nuclear power plants... Wait isn't nuclear bad? At least that's what the majority of the public thinks so it won't happen. The tree huggers of this world like to think that we can supply hydrogen with windmills, solar, and tidal power. Now while these alternate energy sources certainly merit investment we are a looong way from being able to produce anywhere near the energy needed to supply millions of autos with hydrogen.

The other option is, well ironic. We need fuel cells to free ourselves from foreign oil. So we'll get the hydrogen from hydrocarbons. We'll call them hydrocarbons, so that Susie Homemaker won't immediately pick up on the problem that hydrocarbons are foreign oil. Sure it can be more efficient from wellhead to power, which is undeniable a good thing. The problem is that if it works it will reinvigorate the commuter culture here in America, which will exacerbate the problem.

In conclusion the hydrogen economy is uneconomical, and will never happen. But then again the same is true of ethanol-blended fuel, so we can always prop it up on free government subsidies.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

(NOTE - never use the term "energy source" when referring to hydrogen because it only carries energy that has to come from somewhere else)

The same is true of any energy source, and that's probably good advice for those writing scientific papers. But in casual conversation, I think I'm going to carry on saying "energy source" just as much as I like; maybe even more, now that I know it annoys pedants.

Re:How does it come out?

[codehoser]

Energy carrier?

I understand that hydrogen isn't free. We need to use energy to isolate hydrogen, so we can use it in things like automobiles. But really, we haven't injected energy _into_ the hydrogen. It's the source of power for the automobile once it gets there.

This would be similar to the process of expending energy to refine oil into gasoline, would it not? The gasoline is the _source_ of power for the automobile. We don't call it an "energy carrier" just because we had to expend energy in obtaining it.

We could call the process of extracting hydrogen from water "water refinement", and refer to big "water refineries" of the future, right?

Kevin

Re:How does it come out?

[Bohnanza]

Dihydrogen monoxide is one of the most dangerous substances known to science!

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a peek at http://www.dtu.dk/English/About_DTU/News/Making%20 society%20independent%20of%20fossil%20fuels%20-%20 Danish%20researchers%20reveal%20new%20technology.a spx

I quote, for those too lazy to click, "the tablet consists solely of ammonia absorbed efficiently in sea-salt". Doesn't contain much more information, but gives a source for the claims made in the initial comment...

Re:How does it come out?

[thrillseeker]

Hydrogen merely carries the energy, you still have to generate the energy by burning fossil fuels, running nuclear reactors, setting up windmills, or some other means, and how that energy generation is done will determine the effect on the climate.

Besides the potential lessening availability of fossil fuels in the future, combustion of fossil fuels has a detrimental effect due to localized pollution at the combustion point - water vapor, while perhaps producing some fog and causing the Golden Gate Bridge to need more frequent painting, doesn't cause more acidic rain, nor blackened buildings (and lungs).

Additionally, at least in theory, if the pollution of the creation of hydrogen can be localized to efficient facilities, it can also be made a clean process more cheaply - it's easier to clean up a mess that's contained and localized from the beginning than to clean a mess that's been free and dispersed.

If the storage concerns and requirements of H2 can be overcome, then it'll make a fuel that is as clean as we're going to get. The cleanest way to produce it will be some sort of electrolyis - one project I read about envisioned pumping sea water to desert areas, where there is abundant sunshine and sufficient open land, and using solar energy to split the hydrogen out.

Re:How does it come out?

[jnik]

Yes, water is a greenhouse gas. What the OP doesn't mention, however, is that the water lines are already saturated in Earth's atmosphere--adding more water to the atmosphere won't increase the greenhouse effect one bit.

Re:How does it come out?

[Ryan Amos]

You answered your own question there. The hydrogen economy is *not* uneconomical, but the fossil fuel based method of making it is. Fossil fuels (coal, petroleum distillates, natural gas, etc.) will run out. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but probably in our immediate offspring's lives. They will become scarce in our lifetime, and very expensive. When this happens, economics takes hold and the cheapest solution appropriate for a global scale will be used.

Nuclear power is a short-term solution. It's pretty clean, nuclear reactors are safe (at least far safer than gasoline refineries; if you live on the southeast side of Houston, you know what I mean.) We'll eventually figure out how to make fusion work, I think it's only a matter of time. But the nuclear/hydrogen combo is pretty clean compared to the double whammy of coal/gasoline. And soon to be much cheaper in comparison.

Re:How does it come out?

[chainsaw1]

He is correct that water is a greenhouse gas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas.

The advantage is that the atmosphere can only hold a limited amount. When there's too much of it, it precipitates out of the atmosphere (unlike CO2).

Re:How does it come out?

[mrchaotica]

Here's the thing, though: it's water. If that becomes a problem, all you have to do is add a tank to the car to catch it, and then dump it in the sewer next time you go to the hydrogen station. Either that, or keep it and have an onboard water dispenser...

Re:How does it come out?

[Wanderer2]

h2 0? a greenhouse gas? You sure?

See here and here.

From the latter:

The major natural greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36-70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth (not including clouds); carbon dioxide, which causes between 9-26%; and ozone, which causes between 3-7% (note that it is not really possible to assert that such-and-such a gas causes a certain percentage of the GHE, because the influences of the various gases are not additive. The higher ends of the ranges quoted are for the gas alone; the lower end, for the gas counting overlaps).

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

During oil refinement gasoline is boiled out of the mix. The energy required to boil the crude oil is less than what we get when we burn the gasoline. I only wish we had pools and pools of pure hydrogen to tap into - though the extraction process may be a bit harrowing!

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to this artikle:

http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Indland/2005/09/07/062155 .htm (in danish)

they heat the pellet to 350 - 400 degress (C)

Re:How does it come out?

[chill]

The other option is, well ironic. We need fuel cells to free ourselves from foreign oil.

No, we don't. We will use domestic* oil to free ourselves. The tar sands of Colorado are the largest petrolium reserves in the world, and the ones in Alberta are nothing to sneeze at, either.

Take a look at this, and tell me I'm wrong: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columni sts/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_4051709,00.html

But you're right that nuclear is probably the only other realistic, large-scale option.

  -Charles

* "Domestic" here means US/Canada, since I'm in the U.S.

Re:How does it come out?

[Banishedwun]

Funny enough I ran across this article yesterday:

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2005/09/05/united-nuclears- hydrogen-fuel-systems/

second link pointing to the pseudo-science wizardry http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/h2.htm/

According to it:

The system comes in two parts. First, you have the Hydrogen fuel system in your vehicle, and then a Hydrogen generating system that remains in your garage. The Hydrogen generator is either powered by solar electric panels or a wind turbine set-up, either of which makes Hydrogen fuel at virtually no cost. This hydrogen is then stored in hydride tanks.

The tanks are filled with granulated Hydrides, and Hydrogen is pressurized into the material. Hydrides have many advantages over liquid & gas. One is that the density of the Hydrogen stored in the Hydride can be GREATER than that of liquid Hydrogen. This translates directly into smaller and fewer storage tanks.

Once the Hydride is "charged" with Hydrogen, the Hydrogen becomes chemically bonded to the chemical. Even opening the tank, or cutting it in half will not release the Hydrogen gas. In addition, you could even fire incendiary bullets through the tank and the Hydride would only smolder like a cigarette. It is in fact, a safer storage system than your Gasoline tank is.

Then how do you get the Hydrogen back out? To release the Hydrogen gas from the Hydride, it simply needs to be heated. This is either done electrically, using the waste exhaust heat, or using the waste radiator coolant heat.

Our kits heat the Hydride tanks electrically, and as soon at the Hydride is sufficiently warm, Hydrogen is released from the tanks and the on-board computer detects the presence of Hydrogen pressure. The fuel system remains in "Hydrogen" mode until the tank pressure begins to drop. If the tanks run out of Hydrogen, the engine will seamlessly switch over to Gasoline, which enables the car to run conventionally until the Hydrogen tanks are refilled.

Re:How does it come out?

[moro_666]

omg dude, where the hell did you graduate (if at all ?)

since when is pure water a greenhouse gas ? you seem to pretty sure that all clouds / snow / rain are products of greenhouse effect ?

according to your assumptions, how do you think do the countries near equator survive where tons of water is turning into steam by sun every second ... ? billions tons of ocean water is evaporating every year, it seems if as we survive that one ... at least we did until your post here ...

go calculate how much water evaporates from newyork's high tower buildings every morning when the sun rises ...

and fyi: burning gasoline produces tons of water too (gasoline molecul formulas are between C6H14 and C12H26, and a good "medium" compound is C8H18, so if you burn this with oxygen, you get more water molecules than you get CO2), and we have survived that one too, so if we can skip burning the carbon and get rid of massive CO2 production, we're at least one step closer to a cleaner world than we are now.

you definetly over estimate the gas production of cars and underestimate our other bad habits (power stations, local heat stations, you can probably continue the list here...)

i agree that currently hydrogen is mostly extracted from water with power of fossil/nuclear fuel ... but it is possible to make hydrogen also with sun/wind power, which doesnt affect the climate in any measurable amount when compared to fossil/nuclear methods.

and as a positive point to all of this, the planet is overcrowded with humans that create pollution on every step that they make. the overgrowing doesnt seem to be slowing down and neither do we speed down the amount of energy we use each day (depressively this number is rising every day). so just face it, we are doomed. if we get lucky, the bird flu will give us a slight break ...

Re:How does it come out?

[Snaller]

I won't comment on their implementation but others have failed here.


I won't comment on their implementation, but these guys have had this working for 6 months (waiting for patents a copyrights to clear).

Re:How does it come out?

[quantum bit]

This means that it will take a LOT of power to supply a hydrogen economy which means new power plants, which means burning more natural gas and coal. The single best leveragabile solution to a hydrogen economy is new nuclear power plants... Wait isn't nuclear bad?

Well, sorry for the tree huggers, but right now nuclear is the ONLY power source that we have that can produce enough energy to get us off fossil fuels and is viable in the long term.

Solar is too inefficient with current technologies. Wind doesn't produce enough power. Hydro is limited by location and not very scalable because of it. Geothermal is interesting but doesn't really produce much power. In order to maintain our current way of life we're going to need a massive amount of energy.

Breeder reactors (and even more traditional designs) are actually more environmentally friendly than coal plants, but scare people and can in theory be misued to produce EEEEVIL nuc-u-lar weapons.

Re:How does it come out?

[Phronesis]

even if we are getting hydrogen by using energy created at centralized coal processing plants we are still creating less polution then everyone running gas.

How do you figure this? Coal is more carbon-intensive than gasoline, so burning coal to produce hydrogen puts more CO2 into the air than burning the equivalent amount of gasoline.

Coal also produced more sulfur and mercury emissions than gasoline and creates toxic and caustic ash that must be disposed of.

Finally, coal mines cause more environmental damage, especially via acid runoff, than oil wells.

Re:How does it come out?

[retrosteve]

...and my question is where will that energy come from?

Re:How does it come out?

[Analogy Man]

NOTE - never use the term "energy source" when referring to hydrogen because it only carries energy that has to come from somewhere else

In this in a nutshell is why oil/coal companies and their friends at conservative think tanks haven't killed this yet. On the plus side it moves the pollution to point sources (e.g. coal fired power plants and mountian leveling extraction methods...). Bush has even advocated a hydrogen economy (which could be a good thing)....if policy shifts around to reducing emissions from these point sources rather than undoing 35 years of clean air and water regulation the world could be a better place.

Re:How does it come out?

[quantum bit]

Well, on a geologic scale, gasoline and even crude oil is just an energy carrier. Plant life millions of years ago used sunlight to bond simple organic molecules into more complex ones which eventually became hydrocarbons -- effectively storing up large amounts of solar energy into a liquid form.

Re:How does it come out?

[Total_Wimp]

Yes, water is the product of hydrogen combustion. Any guess what the main byproducts are of gasoline production? Yup, in addition to CO2, it's water.

No foggy roads. No green deserts. In fact, the amount of water produced appears to have little effect on the local weather.

Planting trees and talking to congressmen is good advice, but the least of our problems is worrying about the amount of water comming out of the tailpipes of Hydrogen cars.

TW

Re:How does it come out?

[VernonNemitz]

That's BAD! Total energy efficiency, if internal combustion is used, is horrible:
The figures I have to work with are:
50% conversion efficiency of fuel energy to electricity in large power plant.
66% conversion efficiency of electrolysis to make hydrogen.
66% conversion efficiency of making electricity in fuel cell.
95% conversion efficiency of electricity to motive power.
35% conversion efficiency of internal combustion to motive power.
SO: Total efficiency of a direct-burning fossil-fuel car is 35%
Total efficiency of fuel cell car is computed as 50% x 66% x 66% x 95%, or about 21%
Total efficiency of a hydrogen internal combustion car is 50% x 66% x 35% or about 12%.

Re:How does it come out?

[JesseL]

The difference is that we end up with more energy from burning gasoline than it took to refine it > net energy gain.
With electrolysis we spend more energy to get the usable hydrogen than we will ever recover from it > net energy loss.

Re:How does it come out?

[wild_berry]

I prefer to use hydrogen hydroxide. It's less harmful, but still has the kick I need.

Re:How does it come out?

[sabernet]

However, solar an wind power solutions, which cannot produce 24-7(they need to adjust it to meet demand), will benefit from this greatly as superfluously generated power can be routed to "hydrogen refineries". Less energy waste means the other, messier, stations need not run as much.

Re:How does it come out?

[It doesn't come easy]

[...] dictates that it will always take more energy to get the free hydrogen that you can ever get back in a fuel cell

You are correct. The reason it is economically viable is that the human race has at least two virtually unlimited supplies of the very energy we need to break the hydrogen loose and today they go unused in any real capacity. That energy source is either solar or nuclear. Other sources could be viable as well eventually, such as geothermal.

The issue is that we need an energy storage and transportation method that works within our current tech development. Using hydrogen for portable power and electricity for stationary power is feasible as long as we can use an energy source that is plentiful and currently underutilized. Hence, solar or nuclear are the only real possible solutions right now. Solar would be best, considering the Earth receives 5000 times as much solar energy as we currently use in oil equivalents. Nuclear fusion might be a good alternative but I withhold making any concrete statements until we manage to get our first commercial reactor going. Modern nuclear fission reactors are perfectly feasible and safe as long as we manage to keep them out of the hands of terrorists (Note: The US has ZERO modern designs in operation -- we still use highly dangerous designs from the 50's and 60's).

So, in the sense that it takes more energy to break apart hydrogen than you get back from recombining the hydrogen, you are right. But it is practical to use hydrogen as an energy carrier because there is so much under utilized energy sources at our disposal, sources that do not make very good portable energy supplies by themselves.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. Poster is right, water vapor is a greenhouse gas. Unlike all the other gasses out there though, water vapor becomes rain and exits the atmosphere where it's no longer an issue.

You're right though, there is no issue, the vapor from any cars would be dwarfed by evaporation by any large lake, and the ocean probably puts more water in the air than every other source combined.

Re:How does it come out?

[LurkerXXX]

You only move the source of pollution away from the highly visible tail pipe.

Correct, but it is much easier to put a large scrubber system on a Hydrogen 'factory' than it is to put that scrubber system on a car. The factory scrubbing can be much more complete and it makes less weight for the car to drag around.

Electrolyzing water is short sighted at best. The second law of thermodynamics (which we obey in this house!) dictates that it will always take more energy to get the free hydrogen that you can ever get back in a fuel cell. This means that it will take a LOT of power to supply a hydrogen economy which means new power plants, which means burning more natural gas and coal. The single best leveragabile solution to a hydrogen economy is new nuclear power plants...

Or Solar, or wind, or wave. All of those can be mounted nicely on a piece of land but not very well on a vehicle.

The tree huggers of this world like to think that we can supply hydrogen with windmills, solar, and tidal power. Now while these alternate energy sources certainly merit investment we are a looong way from being able to produce anywhere near the energy needed to supply millions of autos with hydrogen.

You don't have to produce enough from those source to supply *all* the cars. Just producing enough for a decent percentage of cars would go a long way toward reducing carbon emissions. Every bit of reduction is good, it doesn't have to be total. Eventually folks may come around to using pebble-bed fission if fusion doesn't pan out.

Re:How does it come out?

[Dan Ost]

It's far easier to put a scrubber on the stack of a power plant than it is to put one on every tailpipe. It would be more efficient, too.

I suspect that's what he's talking about.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they describe it quite well, you use a a catalyst, like that guy's hand and he squeezes it out.
http://www.amminex.com/index_files/image355.jpg

Re:How does it come out?

[pecko666]

Hey, and what percentage is the energy required for converting earth oil into fossil-fuel ? You need lots of energy for that ! So your 35 is pretty close to 16 I think.

Re:How does it come out?

[Phanatic1a]

If you have a way to generate the hydrogen that's cheap enough, you don't care about that inefficiency. Heck, the efficiency of a gasoline-powered IC car is about 12%, but people don't care, are are only beginning to care about the inefficiency now that gas is as expensive as it is.

To make hydrogen meaningful, you need a way to generate large quantities of it cheaply, which basically means using nuclear power as your primary means of generating electricity. I mean, sure, you could get it by cracking hydrocarbons, but since your goal is to get away from needing hydrocarbons, that doesn't help much. And if you use nuclear power as your primary means of generating electricity, you can make enough hydrogen that 12% efficiency from an IC engine is just fine.

Re:How does it come out?

[Surt]

I've often wondered why no one comments on the issue of having all of our cars dumping a lot more water on the roads. Nothing eats roads quite like water, and no one seems to be adding in a factor for road damage when they consider the costs of converting to hydrogen vehicles.

Re:How does it come out?

[kiatoa]

Minor nitpick: the water comes out as vapor which has large amounts of latent heat you must extract before the gas (water vapor) can become a liquid. It just means an expensive and large heat exchanger would need to be added to your already expensive hydrogen car.

I suspect that the water vapor is a non-issue in most places. Of course here in Phoenix, AZ where once upon a time it WAS a dry heat, some of us might beg to differ.

Thinking further, what about heat polution? Is the heat generated by all these human activities just noise in the context of the kw/m^2 solar energy or does the 800MW of heat from a 100MW nuclear plant have an impact (assumably negative) on the environment?

Re:How does it come out?

[codehoser]

So, if our elecrolysis processes ever become so efficient that we pass the break-even point, hydrogen is then going to be considered an energy "source" and not an energy "carrier" ... ?

That seems odd, since the hydrogen itself wouldn't have changed.

Kevin

Re:How does it come out?

[patently obvious nam]

Whats the efficiency of making hydrogen at a nuclear power plant where otherwise wasted hi temperatures and electricity (you can't turn off the reator at night) are used to gennerate essentially free hydrogen? And how do we factor the cost of refinery pollution and oil spills (I'll take a hydrogen spill, thank you.) While I agree that a fuel cell is bettr than a ICE, I would be interested in anythng that speeds the conversion to a hydrogen economy.

Re:How does it come out?

[cev]

While you're at it, you can add the same factor for converting earth oil/coal into fossil fuel for the power plant. It's a wash.

CV

Re:How does it come out?

[shotfeel]

Solar is too inefficient with current technologies.

Although, depending on how you think of it, we've been using stored solar energy all alone. AFAIK, the best solar cells available are plant cells. Using solar energy and storing it in hydrocarbons. When the plants are fossilized, we get fossil fuels.

The question in my mind is, can we simply bypass the 'fossilization" requirement. Wired had an article about one possibility a while back.

Re:How does it come out?

[mfrank]

Maybe it's because the amount of water dumped onto the roads by cars is dwarfed by the natural phenomenon known as "rain" :)

Re:How does it come out?

[Dan Ost]

Fortunately for us, we don't need to find a single complete substitute for fossil fuels.

We can use solar power where it makes sense. Same with wind power and geothermal. Nuclear where political winds allow.

We can also convert some of our fuel consumption to fuels that don't change the carbon balance like biodiesel, methanol, wood/grass chips, other forms of biomass, landfill gas, and thermal depolymerization outputs.

Finally, we can reduce our energy consumption by making smarter choices like replacing incandescent lightbulbs with compact flourescent ones, heating and cooling our houses with heat pumps, driving cars more practical cars, telecomuting, etc. (just off the top of my head).

As oil prices go up, we will switch to cheaper energy sources and reduce our energy consumption where we can. We'll probably always be dependent on oil for many industrial products (can we make plastic without it?), but our consumption will decrease over time just because current practices are unsustainable.

Re:How does it come out?

[Bogtha]

never use the term "energy source" when referring to hydrogen because it only carries energy that has to come from somewhere else

I always see this pointed out when talking about hydrogen, but never when talking about solar power, wind power, wave power, fossil fuel, etc. Why? All those forms of power only carry energy from elsewhere too, yet hydrogen is the only one that is ever singled out as not a "real" energy source.

Re:How does it come out?

[KarmaMB84]

or we could build more nuclear plants and start using all that "nuclear waste" (after we build a new reprocessing facility) in reactors and have relatively clean power for our hydrogen extraction. The French use plutonium, why don't we?

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you accidently swallow a pellet, I imagine that it'll come out .. in the end.

Re:How does it come out?

[MxTxL]

Recall your middle school physics classes where they taught you the difference in kinetic energy and potential energy. Kinetic energy is the energy of movement and potential energy is the kinetic energy something could have if it were released. For example, a rock falling has kinetic energy... but a rock perched on the edge of the table has potential energy. You give something potential energy by lifting it up.

With hydrogen we are talking about chemical energy. It's kind of like potential energy except that the potential is the element's potential to form chemical bonds with other elements. With raw Hydrogen, the potential is H's potential to grab a buddy and form a bond with O to make H20. Doing this releases energy in the form of heat which will drive the motors.

Now the energy carrier part: To reverse the process you have to insert energy into the water to get the H2 to break it's bond with the oxygen. This energy has to come from somewhere.... THAT is really the energy source. (well, sort of.... oil is just an energy carrier as well.... the sun was the original energy source in that regard).

And the problem: You lose energy in the form of heat at every step in this transaction. When we are burning fossil fuels, we are fortunate that the main energy loss happened without us millions of years ago. So to us, it's a net energy gain. (even though it's a terrible, terrible waste of energy that hit the earth millions of years ago... i forget the numbers, but one gallon of gas has an obscene amount solar energy that went into it). With hydrogen, we have to put the energy in right now. Not really practical unless we can come up with a great source of energy. (nukes are the only feasable way... but good luck with that)

Re:How does it come out?

[JesseL]

That's not going to happen. Hydrogen is usefull as a fuel because when it forms a bond with oxygen it releases a certain amount of energy. Ideally it takes exactly the same amount of energy to break that bond by electrolysis. Since, by the laws of thermodyamics, the process of elecrolysis is not 100% efficient (some energy is lost as heat), we will always lose energy by splitting water into H2 and O.

Re:How does it come out?

[mysticgoat]

The advantage is that the atmosphere can only hold a limited amount. When there's too much of it, it precipitates out of the atmosphere (unlike CO2).

And that precipitate is known as "cloud", which is one of the most efficient reflectors of solar energy on the planet.

Figuring out whether the net effect would cause an increase global warming or lead to a big chill is about like stepping into the middle of the debate about the safety of hydric acid (aka hydrogen monoxide).

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear that the cleanup of Dihydrogen monoxide is perhaps the greatest challenge to getting New Orleans back up and running. It has killed thousands in recent weeks.

Re:How does it come out?

[dAzED1]

it's fun to see old-school thought like this.

Check in to the necar5. It ran off methanol, hydrolized *in the car* which was then supplied to the fuel cell floorboard. 75KW fuel cell, tiny car. You may find a few things have changed in the last few decades...do a search for "necar5" and learn a little.

Re:How does it come out?

[quantum bit]

Although, depending on how you think of it, we've been using stored solar energy all alone. AFAIK, the best solar cells available are plant cells. Using solar energy and storing it in hydrocarbons. When the plants are fossilized, we get fossil fuels.

Funny, I just made a similar comment in another thread. Slashdot nexus :)

The question in my mind is, can we simply bypass the 'fossilization" requirement.

Isn't that basically the concept of biodiesel?

Re:How does it come out?

[amliebsch]

I wonder what ever became of the research on methane hydrates. That seemed like a promising source of hydrocarbons.

Re:How does it come out?

[Mr_Matt]

Umm, no - it's the CO2 lines that are mostly saturated. H2O lines are not saturated - you got that backwards.

Re:How does it come out?

[dAzED1]

btw - pulling the hydrogen out of methanol can be done with a series of exothermic reactions, without a single endothermic reaction. The trick has been known for several years now. Again, do a search, and learn something about the tech that is less than a couple decades old.

Re:How does it come out?

[Alexis Boulva]

NOTE - never use the term "energy source" when referring to hydrogen because it only carries energy that has to come from somewhere else

...just like every other energy source?

Re:How does it come out?

[saskboy]

Fossil fuels are an energy carrier too though, they need to be pumped out of the ground which takes energy, floated or driven to the point of use, and they store the energy absorbed by life forms millions of years ago from the Sun mostly.

Don't belittle the benefits of hydrogen just because it doesn't come in a pure state where we want it to be - in our fuel tanks.

Re:How does it come out?

[Surt]

But that's exactly my point. Rain does massive, massive damage to our roadways every year. Spring road repair is always a huge task, costing a lot of money. Yet no one seems to be considering what will happen when in fact our cars dump more water on the roadways than rain does now. Multiply millions of hydrogen cars by the average 1.5 hours per day of commuting in LA, and compare to the rate of rainfall in that region.

Re:How does it come out?

[hhawk]

> Electrolyzing water is short sighted at best

At least it can be done AT NIGHT when rates are at least lower...

Re:How does it come out?

[focitrixilous P]

In conclusion the hydrogen economy is uneconomical

In today's market conditions, yes. However, oil prices will continue to rise. The tree huggers may not whine so much when their precious organic food triples in price because of shipping costs. In the short term hydrogen is not profitable, but as the oil supply dwindles, there will be a lot of money to be made. America has an abundance of farmland/empty spaces, so solar is a possibility. Even in cities, panels could be added over parking lots and on buildings. This is not profitable at the moment, but it will be in the future as oil continues to rise in price.

Re:How does it come out?

[NardofDoom]

Which do you think is easier: Controlling emissions on a few dozen coal burning power plants or controlling emissions on a few hundred million automobiles?

Not to mention the fact that any source of electricity can be used to create hydrogen, and wind power is cheaper over 20 years megawatt-for-megawatt than coal. (Google it.)

Re:How does it come out?

[cheesybagel]

That energy source is either solar or nuclear.

Solar *is* nuclear. :-)

The only difference is that huge nuclear fusion reactor was free.

Re:How does it come out?

[jd0g85]

There is no problem with noble metal catalysts for fuel cells if they use internal combustion rather than fuel cells.

Just because something is cheaper or easier to do, doesn't mean it's cleaner. Expensive fuel cells are far more efficient than cheaper ICEs (including those that burn hydrogen).

Internal combustion seems to be the current track, how else would we have big loud cars?

Gasp, we'd have to give that up! Besides, the sound of a car just isn't the same without the smell of gas and rubber.

The real issue is still global warming and environmental effects. H2O is a greenhouse gas, just like CO2. H2O also has more immediate effects on local weather. If we switch over to hydrogen powered autos, we can count on more foggy roadways in the future.

Gasoline consists of hydrocarbons (with a lot of additives to help it burn cleanly). The chemical formula for hydrocarbons is CH3-(CH2)n-CH3. (The n indicates that the number varies. The molucule is a chain of carbon with hydrogens hanging off.) Burning gas gives mostly water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) (and some other chemicals that are by products of our inefficiency, like carbon monoxide (CO)).

You're not really going to get any more water emitted from your "hydrogen powered" cars that you already have being emitted from standard gas cars. What you don't get is CO2, CO, etc. The pollution at the car level is zero. (Pollution is shifted to the factories that produce the H2.)

OTOH, there could be some interesting benefits. Imagine the whole stretch of desert along U.S. Highways turning green because of the new abundance of water... (Not really a realistic scenerio, though.)

You're right, not realisitc. See above.

Finally, as others have pointed out, Hydrogen merely carries the energy, you still have to generate the energy by burning fossil fuels, running nuclear reactors, setting up windmills, or some other means, and how that energy generation is done will determine the effect on the climate.

Jury is still out on the climatic effects. But some forms of energy generation and conversion are cleaner or more efficient than others. (Unfortunately, these are often more expensive, too.)

Katrina should have been a wake-up call for all of us. While it's unknown and probably unknowable if Katrina was the result of global warming, it's pretty certain that as the oceans heat up, we'll get more Katrina-sized storms. We've got to take action to stop the greenhouse warming now.

I'm from California and am well aware of the problems caused by warm water (El Nino).

You can take action by conserving energy and pushing your legislative representatives towards greener policies. You can plant trees to soak up CO2. (Just don't burn them for firewood later!)

Decomposing logs release CO2 back into the atmosphere anyway. It's just slower.

Re:How does it come out?

[quantum bit]

Fortunately for us, we don't need to find a single complete substitute for fossil fuels.

Agreed, and decentralization can help here. Maybe a couple nuke plants for the heavy duty power generation, supplemented by solar panels on people's roofs to take the load off when it's sunny.

Finally, we can reduce our energy consumption by making smarter choices like replacing incandescent lightbulbs with compact flourescent ones

I'd really like to see some focus on efficiency on public lighting. I drove by a huge car dealership late last night, and despite the place being closed and deserted, there were probably a hundred light posts with 4 very bright bulbs each, lighting up much of the surrounding area as bright as daylight. No reflectors either, so much of it was cast off in random directions and wasted.

LED technology gets me excited because it's so efficient. I wonder if there's any way the diodes themselves can be scaled larger to avoid having to array hundreds together. It would be nice if it was more efficient than the sodium lamps that municipalities use so that they don't have that awful orange color.

Re:How does it come out?

[chill]

I think while methane hydrates are just laying around for the picking, and in large supply -- that supply is on the bottom of the ocean. Just getting down there to do the picking is damned expensive.

Either way, there is more stored energy just "lying around for the taking" than people realize.

  -Charles

Re:How does it come out?

[barawn]

It's not. You only move the source of pollution away from the highly visible tail pipe.

Ignoring anything else: what you're saying here is that you're moving the pollution away from where people live. If you've ever lived in a massively crowded area (Los Angeles, or any of the major cities in India) this pollution is probably the most severe.

Besides, centralizing pollution production is smart. That way instead of 100 million catalytic converters attempting to minimize pollution, you just have a few plants to do the same thing. Modernizing the plants is far easier than replacing 100 million catalytic converters.

Electrolyzing water is short sighted at best. The second law of thermodynamics (which we obey in this house!) dictates that it will always take more energy to get the free hydrogen that you can ever get back in a fuel cell.

Yes, oddly enough, you have to have a source of energy to store it. It's short sighted? Space solar satellites, beaming down power to an electrolysis plant offshore via microwave rectification. If you want to get really silly, you can do it in the Arctic.

We need fuel in the long run, and any renewable fuel will take more power to create than it does to use it. Fuel cells are ridiculously efficient at creating electricity, which is in turn ridiculously efficient at turning motors. Barring a breakthrough in conventional electrical batteries, I don't see the problem with hydrogen.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are you getting your data that the earth's climate has remained unchanged over it's entire history?

Climate change is the way it is. Just because profiteers are making us beleive that we are destroying the planet doesn't make it true.

Bad men are getting rich convincing people like you that "Global Warming" is our fault and we should pay more money for programs and studies on the topic, while charging even more money for every process that converts energy from one form to another.

Bush's cabal is winning.

Re:How does it come out?

[Bachus9000]

Solution: flying cars. :)

Re:How does it come out?

[SidV]

"according to your assumptions, how do you think do the countries near equator survive where tons of water is turning into steam by sun every second ... ? billions tons of ocean water is evaporating every year, it seems if as we survive that one ... "


Because you assume the "greenhouse" effect is linear, and it's not. It's logarithmic dropping off to cutoff at a certain temperature (based on a variety of factors), and in the case of water it's high thermal inertia actually limits further warming.

You can see this in effect during in those areas the nights are very close in temperature to days. as this stored heat is shed at night.

This holds for equatorial areas with high water content like central/south America, Indonesia, and south east Asia. Areas like the Sahara dessert get much hotter without much greenhouse gasses, but are much colder at night.

In fact water (pure or otherwise) is the MAJOR greenhouse gas ranking #1 #2 and #3

Re:How does it come out?

[pipegeek]

I always see this pointed out when talking about hydrogen, but never when talking about solar power, wind power, wave power, fossil fuel, etc. Why? All those forms of power only carry energy from elsewhere too, yet hydrogen is the only one that is ever singled out as not a "real" energy source.

My guess would be because in the case of fossil fuels, wind power, wave power, etc. the "elsewhere" is outside of our system, whereas with hydrogen, it is not. While solar, wind, and fossil fuels are transferring energy from another source (nuclear fusion -> "solar power" -> wind power, fossil fuels, etc.), the origin of said power (the sun) is outside of our system and beyond our control. We get these, essentially, for "free"--we don't handle the energy transfer. The reason that people rag on hydrogen as a fuel "source" is that it must be tacked--by us--onto the end of this chain of fuel sources. It isn't a new source of energy; it's a new way of getting energy from our power plants to our vehicles. As such, saying that a vehicle is "powered" by hydrogen is rather like saying that a vehicle is "powered" by electricity.

That said, you are right in that the only actual sources of power that we have are nuclear and solar--the rest are essentially stored solar energy.

Re:How does it come out?

[Malc]

You're comparing apples to oranges. How much energy does it take to get petrol to the pump?

Consider the oil sands in Alberta. (They give Canada the second largest proven oil reserves in the world.) It takes a huge amount of energy to extract the oil from these sands (through boiling). It costs about $10 to extract a barrel of oil from them, compared with $2 to pump it in Saudi Arabia. So here I've given two examples that suggest the cost of getting oil, and I haven't even mentioned transportation and refining.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

In order to maintain our current way of life we're going to need a massive amount of energy.

So change it. I recall a quote by Bush with regards to the Kyoto thing. "The American way of life is not negotiable."

So what he is saying is that 7mpg suv's and air conditioned sidewalks is the way it is, and while he is a puppet for his daddy's friends' corporations, American energy consumption (and obesity) will not change.

Good luck with this hydrogen thing in North America, the puppeteers will not let it happen.

Re:How does it come out?

[b1t r0t]

You forgot to mention how coal fired plants output much more radioactive pollution than nuclear plants simply because there are no standards to limit them.

Re:How does it come out?

[rihjol]

I agree that there is a lot of paranoia about nuclear power. But it's somewhat understandable given some high profile accidents.

From what I understand there are several proven, new models for reactors that would not result in the sorts of problems we saw at Chernobyl and TMI, but isn't there still the issue of storing the spent fuel? It might be a problem that can be dealt with, but it seems like a legitimate concern. Sounds like we're already doing a poor job of handling that now.

Re:How does it come out?

[mysticgoat]

Nuclear power is a short-term solution... the nuclear/hydrogen combo is pretty clean compared to the double whammy of coal/gasoline. And soon to be much cheaper in comparison.

Nuclear power is only cheap if you measure its cost with an archaic accounting system that cannot apply a major future expense to the period of production that brings that expense about. Most of the cost in the current technology is in handling the waste products over a very long future period. An appropriate solution to recycling or permanently storing nuclear waste is no closer today than it was in 1960.

We are more likely to see economical cold fusion power generation sooner than we will see an economical solution to the waste problems of fission technology. In other words, the corporate and governmental inertia involved in developing a controlled nuclear waste stream is orders of magnitude greater than any amount of enthusiasm that could be brought to the task.

Re:How does it come out?

[drew]

Hydro is limited by location and not very scalable because of it.

Hydroelectric power, although renewable, is still incredibly environmentally unfriendly. The incredible amount of environmental disruption that is causes is only slightly offset by the fact that it only affects the local environment rather than the global environment.

Re:How does it come out?

[rtaylor]

Although, depending on how you think of it, we've been using stored solar energy all alone. AFAIK, the best solar cells available are plant cells. Using solar energy and storing it in hydrocarbons. When the plants are fossilized, we get fossil fuels.

Actually, we have been using stored fusion energy which was delivered as solar radiation.

Re:How does it come out?

[Martin Blank]

You question rben's education, and then post that?

First of all, water is the major greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Equilibrium is kept in the atmosphere by precipitation of the vapor into rain, snow, etc. Water added through evaporation or fuel burning goes through the same cycle.

Second, in terms of energy efficiency, the power stations are FAR more efficient than automobiles. If we're able to tap the energy from those stations for use in vehicles through electric cars, hydrogen cells, or some other method, it will be better than the localized burning of fuels in cars and trucks.

You might also want to check into your CO2 sources; according to the DoE, about 56% of the CO2 generated by the US comes from coal and natural gas, and last time I checked, there weren't too many people lining up their cars for lumps of carbon. Petroleum counts for almost all of the rest, and most of that is used in transportation.

Thirdly, you clearly are years out of date on population growth. While energy growth is continuing to grow, population growth is slowing, and significantly so. Ten years ago, a population of twelve billion was predicted for 2050, with little end in sight. Now the world population is expected to peak at about nine billion between 2050 and 2070, and then to start falling. In 1990, the total fertility rate of the world was 3.4 children per woman; today it's about 2.6, and in 2025 it's predicted to decline to 2.3. Measure that against a replacement rate of about 2.1. Japan and several European nations are already facing potential crises over their population rates, which have reached replacement rate or lower, and are continuing to drop.

You should check your own facts before you go criticizing others.

Re:How does it come out?

[KylePflug]

Doesn't this fail ot take into account that there is already water vapor in regular internal combustion exhaust?

Besides, no doubt much, if not most, of the damage of rainfall is due to the constant erosive impact of rain against the road. That's a lot different than a constant, slow mist of water vapor settling on the road.

Re:How does it come out?

[mbrod]

Finally, as others have pointed out, Hydrogen merely carries the energy, you still have to generate the energy by burning fossil fuels, running nuclear reactors, setting up windmills, or some other means, and how that energy generation is done will determine the effect on the climate.

Sorry but I find it pretty silly people think it important to point out H is only an energy carrier. Fossil fuels only carry energy as well, and they take a lot longer to get the energy stored in them and are a lot dirtier getting the energy out.

As we move towards being a Type 1 civilization over the next couple hundred years we would be wise to start using Hydrogen as the storage medium as soon as possible.

Is the state of education and big oil propaganda in the world really so bad that all we get out of discussions on energy sources now is "H is only a carrier" and "H20 is a greenhouse gas"? I think we can do better than that.

Re:How does it come out?

[Ced_Ex]

It would be nice if it was more efficient than the sodium lamps that municipalities use so that they don't have that awful orange color.

I always thought they used the sodium lights particularly for their orange colour? Isn't it suppose to give better contrast in winter conditions?

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

As oil prices go up, we will switch to cheaper energy sources and reduce our energy consumption where we can.

Ironically, if you change your consumption rates lower, or switch to another source, both the price of oil will go higher (as thier profits per consumptive unit go down), and your new source will go up (demand).

Someone is getting rich off all this crap.

Re:How does it come out?

[MooseTick]

"(NOTE - never use the term "energy source" when referring to hydrogen because it only carries energy that has to come from somewhere else)"

Does oil count as an energy source or a carrier? It is merely a compound that contains energy derived from somewhere else. While that
"somewhere else" may be millions of years of pressuse, it still comes from somewhere else.

It is true that we can't pump hydrogen from the ground like oil, but it still would be the source of energy for whatever used it.

Is the sun an energy source or an energy carrier? Doesn't the high gravity cause the sun to cause nuclear reactions and emit energy. Perhaps the only real energy source is gravity. Everything else is a carrier.

Re:How does it come out?

[It doesn't come easy]

You're right, of course. What we need now is a program to mine the Sun for hydrogen...

Re:How does it come out?

[AndersOSU]

Yeah I know about this, this is the R&D route that Mercedes is taking. The problem it solves is not the energy balance one, its the hydrogen transport one. They recon that because transporting hydrogen isn't safe its better to carry something more like gasoline, and use an on-board chem plant to convert it to hydrogen.

It doesn't touch the energy problem. Methanol fuel suffers from the same problems as ethanol additives, but only more so because the trees have longer life cycles, and produce less -OH (I think) per pound than corn. Either way until we can get ethanol-blended fuels to work without subsidies (never) methanol won't work either.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

The adsorption/desorption of gas into solid materials is often exo/endothermic and by controlling the temperature you can add or release hydrogen and other gases.

The basic technology of adsorbing certain gas species onto high specific surface area substrates (pellets and powders) has been around for a long time. The DoE uses this technology to separate deuterium and tritium from hydrogen gas (they have different desorption rates from hydride powders). I think that this paper was written by Westinghouse SRS and talks about the subject:

http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pd fs/review04/st_p4_ritter.pdf

Also refer to 'Hydride' on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydride

Metal hydride powder, as well as zeolite and amine powder, is used in the aerospace industry for adsorbing particular gases. They used to use amine powders to take the co2 out of the air in submarines by throwing it on the floor (a long, long time ago) and they still use amine reactor beds to scrub the atmosphere in the space shuttle.

Re:How does it come out?

[AndersOSU]

Uh where do you get the methanol? This is the very reason that hydrocarbons (methanol included) are used to create hydrogen.

However, ethanol production is not economically or energetically feasable. Neither is methanol.

Re:How does it come out?

[googly eyes]

But your efficiency calculations do not include the use of solar power for hydrogen production.
Sure solar is ineficient, but the solutions that are almost available now remove #'s 1 and 2 on your list, and beyond the price of the cells it is virtually free.

So by your formula - solar production of hydrogen burned directly in a combustion engine, is almost equal to burning fossil fuels.

United Nuclear is developing a system that uses solar panels to produce the hydrogen via electrolysis - 8 - 2' x 4' panels is all you need for 1 car.
http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/

There is also a company based in England that has a direct solar to hydrogen panel that flows water through the cell and produces hydrogen.
http://www.hydrogensolar.com/basics.html

So please revise your calculations and factor in that the fossil fuel to hydrogen option is not the only viable option.

Re:How does it come out?

[Golias]

Very well put.

The only advantage to electric vehicles is that they open up the possiblity of using alternate enery sources, such as Solar and nuclear power, which currently would not allow you to mount the original power plant on the car itself.

You don't gain any efficiency at all. Not everybody is aware of that fact.

Re:How does it come out?

[mwood]

Two comments:

What makes you say "fossil fuel"? Sure, hydrogen generation can be coupled to coal/oil/gas/nuclear power sources, but it can just as well be coupled to solar/wind/wave/something-we-don't-have-yet.

So, how about external combustion instead of that fuel cell? Less complicated and demanding mechanically, possibly cleaner, easier on lubricants, more choices of materials, etc. (30kg polymer engines, anyone?)

Re:How does it come out?

[Lagged2Death]

LED technology gets me excited because it's so efficient.

LEDs make super-efficient colored lights - i.e., indicators on electronic gear, traffic signals, automotive brake and turn signals, etc. That's partly because the colored LEDs put out many lumens per watt, but it's also largely because no colored filter (which wastes 60-80% of the light produced) is needed with colored LEDs.

But even the best white LEDs are only slightly more efficient than typical 100-year-old-tech incandescent bulbs, and (so far, at least) far less efficient than older tech like flourescents and sodium lamps. White LEDs have become popular in flashlights lately because they have other characteristics that make them very good at that specialized task, not because they're terribly efficient.

Re:How does it come out?

[teh kurisu]

Even if hydrogen fuel for cars is manufactured using traditional energy sources (fossil fuel, nuclear, renewable), there are still advantages to using it. Oil-produced hydrogen would move the pollution associated with fossil-fuel burning away from population centres, helping rid cities of smog. They also be able to run with much higher efficiency than the average car, as well has having facilities for filtering out the most harmful pollutants.

And one of the often-publicised disadvantages to renewables such as wind and wave energy is the fact that they need to be situated far from population centres to work efficiently. Hydrogen could be shipped from hydrogen-producing windfarms in the same way as petrol is shipped to filling stations.

Re:How does it come out?

[mwood]

Duuh, the pollutant released in generating hydrogen is oxygen. (At least, if you don't do something insane like cracking precious fossil hydrocarbons rather than abundant safe easily-recycled water.) Suddenly you would want to be *near* a fuel refinery.

Re:How does it come out?

[Phisbut]

While you're at it, you can add the same factor for converting earth oil/coal into fossil fuel for the power plant.

Not all power plants use oil/coal/fossil fuel. Hydroelectricity, wind power, solar power, nuclear power... the whole point of all this is to allow *other* sources of power into a car.

Re:How does it come out?

[mwood]

Well, under the right conditions CO2 would change phase and exit the atmosphere, but those are conditions we wouldn't want to live in. :-/

Re:How does it come out?

[pigwiggle]

"There are two sources of hydrogen, electrolyzing water, and stripping it from hydrocarbons."

Or alcohols, which we can simply grow.

"I think that the catalyst problem is more solvable than the more fundamental problem of hydrogen source"

The catalysis problem is one of many challenges fuel cells present. In the end these are problems for engineers, and they will be solved.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

yawn.. wake me when I can buy box of these at Costco to fill my bloated vehicle

Re:How does it come out?

[iabervon]

There are parts of the US where electricity is really cheap, because it's easy to produce, there's not much demand, and it's far enough away from high demand locations that transmission loss would make it not worthwhile. If you can transport hydrogen safely and efficiently, this is about ideal. Sure, you lose a certain amount of energy transforming it, but not as much as you'd lose if you just didn't collect it, which is what happens now.

Hydrocarbons aren't all foreign oil. Biodiesel is actually a much better source, because it doesn't contain any sulfur (the main problem with producing hydrogen from crude oil is that you also get H2S, which is toxic and corrosive, due to the impurities in crude).

But the real benefit of a hydrogen-based method is that it adds modularity to the system. When someone manages to get power out of fusion (not soon, but eventually), and electricity becomes really easy to produce, it'll be trivial to switch hydrogen production to use that as a source. Fabricating gasoline from water, graphite, and energy is a lot harder.

(Calling a process which is more efficient from wellhead to power uneconomical is odd; it's obviously cheaper in the long run, and the short run is a matter of politics, not economics.)

Re:How does it come out?

[Stephan Schulz]

The real issue is still global warming and environmental effects. H2O is a greenhouse gas, just like CO2. H2O also has more immediate effects on local weather. If we switch over to hydrogen powered autos, we can count on more foggy roadways in the future.

Well, H2O is a greenhouse gas, but not like CO2. The time scales are different. The carrying capacity of the atmosphere for water vapour depends only on the air temperature. Superfluous water drops out really quick via precipation. CO2, on the other hand, is only removed via very slow processes. So CO2 is a driver of climate change, water vapour only acts to reinforce the primary effect.

BTW, burning HYDROcarbons also generates water vapour. If we use hydrogen in fuel cells, the amount generated is probably less than the amount we get from burning gasoline. And in both cases, the amount of water vapour we create is small compared to natural evaporation.

...You can plant trees to soak up CO2. (Just don't burn them for firewood later!)

...or do anything else with them. If you want to keep the carbon out of the air, you need to sequester the wood and neither burn it nor allow it to rot. Of course, if you burn it instead of fossil fuels, you come out on top (i.e. you're carbon neutral instead of putting more CO2 into the atmosphere).

Re:How does it come out?

[mwood]

The stuff that's taken out of a nuke plant is only waste if you waste it. There's still a lot of energy in it, or it wouldn't be a problem, would it? Stick it in some process that doesn't need such high energy density, or use it for nondestructive testing, sterilization, etc. There'll still be some we don't know how to use (yet) but that heap will be a lot smaller. There are a lot of uses for radioactive material that don't involve big bangs or boiling water by the kiloton.

Primitive societies know how to use every scrap of an animal they've taken. We need to think seriously about how to do the same with industrial processes.

Re:How does it come out?

[Charles Gaudette]

Electrolyzing water is short sighted at best. The second law of thermodynamics (which we obey in this house!) dictates that it will always take more energy to get the free hydrogen that you can ever get back in a fuel cell. This means that it will take a LOT of power to supply a hydrogen economy which means new power plants, which means burning more natural gas and coal. The single best leveragabile solution to a hydrogen economy is new nuclear power plants... Wait isn't nuclear bad? At least that's what the majority of the public thinks so it won't happen.

Since it will take 20 to 30 years for this hydrogen car thing to really happen. That is if you don't get all Chicken Little about the early adopters. Then, hydrogen energy delivery will be just in time for FUSION reactors.

Since fusion reactors have already achieved a break-even experiment, I for one, think that real fusion will arrive in 20 years. Then you will have all this free energy looking for a mobile delivery system.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/ 05/2034240&from=rss

Hydrogen is a tool that solves a significant mobile energy delivery problem. It separates the delivery issue from the energy creation issues, something that gasoline will never do (obviously.) So it's a good thing.

Re:How does it come out?

[mycelia]

What about using bacteria to release hydrogen from biomass?
http://news.com.com/Fuel+cell+pulls+hydrogen+out+o f+bacteria/2100-1008_3-5683881.html

Re:How does it come out?

[klang]

ah, 'delta' is the catalyst, I see it now!

Re:How does it come out?

[ArbitraryConstant]

Refining will very quickly become the problem.

Exxon recently announced that natural gas production in North America has peaked, and natural gas is necessary as a hydrogen source because the hydrocarbons from the tar sands are too big to be useful. It takes hydrogen to make smaller ones.

They're talking about building nuclear reactors to make the hydrogen instead...

Re:How does it come out?

[mwood]

Two things about LEDs. One: you can buy LED streetlamps now. Two: have you *seen* the nasty stuff that comes out of refining the materials used to make semiconductors?

Re:How does it come out?

[mwood]

Indeed, it takes more energy to make a storage battery than you will ever get out of it, yet battery companies make money. (Boy, do they make money! $5.00 for a cell the size of a saccharin tablet....)

Re:How does it come out?

[Jeremi]

The difference is that we end up with more energy from burning gasoline than it took to refine it > net energy gain.

Not exactly -- that would be a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The fact is that the 'refining process' started millions of years ago, and more energy was added to the system over those years than we take out of it at the end. It only seems like a gain to us if we ignore the first 99% of the process.

Anyway, it's irrelevant in the long run -- the details of fossil fuel refinement are only important as long as there is fossil fuel around to refine. Eventually there won't be any left.

Re:How does it come out?

[halfelven]

H2O is a greenhouse gas, just like CO2

And this was modded "Score:3, Interesting"??? What the heck?
Dude, the atmosphere is already saturated with H2O. Even if we generate more, it will not stay in gaseous form - it will merely condensate into liquid form. It will not contribute anything to the absorbtion of heat overall.

Re:How does it come out?

[dAzED1]

my point is that methanol production energy losses, then using the methanol in such a setup to eventually power fule cells, involves 0 fossil fuels and is less of a loss than burning fossil fuels, losing almost everything in transmission, and turning a light in your kitchen.

Rather, my point is that we can gain fossil fuel independence, without having to revert to coal or 100% nuclear power.

Re:How does it come out?

[mwood]

No, you have to convert the whole fleet. Few will risk being stuck in the back of beyond with an empty tank and a nearby fueling station that has lotsa gasoline but no H2. Nobody wants to pay for parallel distribution systems, at least not for very long. The only reason that passenger diesel had a chance was because it was already available nearly everywhere and it's delivered by the same trucks and pipes.

Re:How does it come out?

[dAzED1]

nor is transmitting power over power lines. And those IC engines! Yowza are they wasteful. Are they as wasteful as producing methanol, and using it in a necar5-line vehicle? Nope.

"feasable" is a relative term.

Re:How does it come out?

[shmlco]

While moving the pellets to the "pump" is a wash (gasoline has to be transported there as well), it would seem that there's an added inefficiency, in that once used, the pellets need to be returned to the "refinery" to be recharged. If true, that would appear to be a major drawback to the system.

Re:How does it come out?

[spectrum-]

Ok so making hydrogen needs some sort of fuel. Why not run the powerstations on biofuels? Ethanol runs cars in Mexico and Bio-diesel etc are gaining more momentum.

They plants that are grown reduce "greenhouse" emissions which are then re-produced when the plants are harvested and made into fuel that is burned. End result is largely neutral. Ok not a perfect solution compared to solar and the like, but certainly a good stop gap solution.

But then why not consider - why bother with hydrogen as a carrier at all? Why not just use biofuels until humanity finds a better fuel source. Most existing cars can be converted to run on biofuels which means this can start to help right now, rather than waiting for the development of new engine technology or fuel cell technology which seems everymore problematic.

Re:How does it come out?

[aldheorte]

Can you supply a source for the assertion that 'the Earth receives 5000 times as much solar energy as we currently use in oil equivalents'? I have a genuine interest on how you or someone else derived that number.

Re:How does it come out?

[JBHarris]

I vote we ban friction. Who is with me?

Re:How does it come out?

[Grab]

Because you need energy to separate the "H2" from the "O". With a 100% efficiency system, you could convert H20 to H2 + O, then use a fuel cell or whatever to generate electricity/heat/motion, and you'll get back precisely the energy in electricity/heat/motion that you used to separate "H2" from "O" initially. In fact the world sucks, so you're actually at some crappy low percentage.

The only benefit from using hydrogen is that this conversion process can be done somewhere outside your town so the emissions in town are clean. Same thing with electric vehicles. So what we need is some way of storing lots of potential energy in a car, which means you need high-density batteries for pure electric, or high-density hydrogen storage for fuel cell. Hydrogen is currently looking more likely. Initial versions just used high-pressure tanks, but that needs all sorts of high pressure pumps and heavy tanks. Trouble is that molecules in a gas in a confined space will naturally want to jump about (it's what creates gas pressure), so that's a pain.

The latest approach is to stash molecules of H2 in the gaps between molecules in various fancy compounds, kind of like dropping marbles into a tube (you may have heard of carbon nanotubes being used for it, which almost exactly mimics that analogy). Being "slotted in place" allows more H2 storage without the high pressure tank. And that seems to be what this one is about.

Grab.

Re:How does it come out?

[Itchy Rich]

While you're at it, you can add the same factor for converting earth oil/coal into fossil fuel for the power plant. It's a wash.

Industrial-scale processes for this sort of things are more efficient than automobile-scale processes.

For example, in the largest diesel engines (as used in tankers etc.) efficiency can reach around 60%.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power is only cheap if you measure its cost with an archaic accounting system that cannot apply a major future expense to the period of production that brings that expense about.

Then let's apply the same thinking to fossil fuels, mmm? We already scrub smokestacks when we can, and I presume that cost has been added into electrical costs. What about the cost of the catylitic converters on all our cars? What about the cost of the stuff that gets past our scrubbers and converters? That's pollution - that doesn't really count the CO2 which isn't exactly pollution but is a greenhouse gas. Nuclear waste is nasty, but at least it's a solid and it's in one place. I understand that a considerable amount of nuclear material comes out of our smokestacks from burning coal, and that just disappears into our atmosphere. Throw some breeder reactors around the US to recycle that waste (which still has like 95% of its energy still in it) and we'd be in a lot better shape than our current policy allows.

Is Nuclear power without fault? Nope. Does it stomp the holy hell out of all our other viable alternatives? Yes it does.

Re:How does it come out?

[Itchy Rich]

Industrial-scale processes for this sort of things are more efficient than automobile-scale processes.

For example, in the largest diesel engines (as used in tankers etc.) efficiency can reach around 60%.

Sorry, I forgot to check my sources. After a quick check the highest efficiency I've found is quoted as "above 50%".

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

While nuclear power is cheap if you measure it in cost per KWH, it's only cheaper if you ignore the health costs. I'd suggest solar/wind/hydroelectric power instead.

Also realize that there's no "best" solution, because they're all trade offs. Dams stop wildlife and can cause floods. Wind turbines can take out birds. Solar (from what I understand) is a large initial investment, and doesn't work very well when it's cloudy. Geothermal works well, but it's hard to find places to implement it. So no matter what method you use there's always a draw back. If that weren't the case then we'd all be using that method to generate power!

Re:How does it come out?

[aminorex]

Solar irradiance is 1370 W/m^2. The Earth's mean radius is 6,371.3 km. A=pi*r^2. You do the math.

Re:How does it come out?

[Washizu]

"It bothers me to no end when people tout hydrogen fuel as pollution free. It's not. You only move the source of pollution away from the highly visible tail pipe."

What's better? Concentrating the pollution in a remote area or bringing it to, by defitinion, places everyone is trying to get to?

Re:How does it come out?

[aminorex]

Well, it's pretty cheap to poke a vacuum cleaner hose down there. It's not like it requires a high-tech operation. Frankly, I think it would behoove us to get the clathrates before the clathrates get us!

Re:How does it come out?

[soupdevil]

Another advantage of electric vehicles is that you can pollute somewhere other than where the vehicle is used, and properly dispose of the pollution. For example, generating solar cells and batteries produces waste, but then that waste can be processed, and re-released, or stored, and the electric vehicle produces no local waste. There is no way to capture the pollution produced by a fossil-powered vehicle.

Re:How does it come out?

[It doesn't come easy]

Close to the bottom of the page, a conservative figure...

Also here in the first paragraph...from this estimate, 27 years x 365 days = 9,855 times as much energy as we currently use.

Also here, here, and here.

Bottom line is that solar is possible today if we can ever wean ourselves off of oil (and keep the oil dependent businesses from buying off congress). (a lot of tree hugging rhetoric here but they have a point none-the-less...search for "oil lobby" to find relevant comments)

Re:How does it come out?

[tantrum]

yup, dihydrogen monoxide kills more people every year than landmines and handguns combined. It is especially dangerous when it is stored in large basins (referred to as pools).

When it heats up, the vapour might also be extremely dangerous and lead to serious harm. The bruns created by this vapour might lead to serious infections or in the worst scenario even death.

So far mankind have managed to find no way of making this molecular structure any safer, even though our best scientists have tried for the best part of the last two centuries.

And the worst thing is that it is an uncontrolled substance

Re:How does it come out?

[mOdQuArK!]

Making mobile tanks to safely store high-pressure hydrogen gas in sufficient quantities to equal the energy-density of current hydrocarbon-based fuels is a non-trivial engineering challenge.

In addition, since hydrogen gas has such a small molecule, unless it's chemically bonded to something, it tends to leak through just about every kind of substance that can be used to contain it.

If you come up with a safe, cheap way of storing hydrogen at the energy-densities of existing fuels, then you have found the Holy Grail of energy distribution.

Re:How does it come out?

[aminorex]

The only real energy source is creation, eh? Put a big bang in your tank, bubba! The Sun doesn't create energy either, it just transmutes matter -- from hydrogen!

/me mumbles something about thermodynamic oppressors

Re:How does it come out?

[xoboots]

Nuclear power is only cheap if you measure its cost with an archaic accounting system that cannot apply a major future expense to the period of production that brings that expense about. Most of the cost in the current technology is in handling the waste products over a very long future period. An appropriate solution to recycling or permanently storing nuclear waste is no closer today than it was in 1960.

You mean the same archaic accounting process that completely ignores externality costs in oil production and consumption? If the Atomic industry was run the same way as the hydrocarbon industry, we'd all be riding in electric cars.

There is no parity in costing because people confuse total cost with price so where one industry may try (or be forced) to do more, another industry is not. I agree that we SHOULD be costing externalities into price, but it is difficult to get agreement on these issues.

Economics are always favourable when you don't account for externalities or when you blue-sky about proposed but unproven technologies. Fission energy shouldn't be dismissed so easily, particularly when there is such a need for a petrochemical replacement. I wouldn't advocate it as "the" solution but it can be a temporary crutch until we can figure out what the hell to do in the long run.

Re:How does it come out?

[wealthychef]

The only advantage to electric vehicles is that they open up the possiblity of using alternate enery sources, such as Solar and nuclear power, which currently would not allow you to mount the original power plant on the car itself.

Sounds like a pretty big advantage to me! If you look at this issue, the main argument I think is a so-called "hydrogen economy" that uses hydrogen as the energy transport and the "electric economy" that uses the existing electrical grid to run plug-in electric cars. The main drawback of these schemes is cost and in the case of hydrogen, INFRASTRUCTURE. When the cost is fairly close to fossil fuels and the bugs in the hybrids/electrics are worked out, I'm in! I'm no "commie green," LOL, but personally, I'm tired of oil. It's dirty and it funds dictators.

Re:How does it come out?

[medelliadegray]

ok, but can you make vast quantities of oil by harnessing sunlight, or wind, or tidal power?

Sure, perhaps hydrogen is less efficent by your calculations, but by my calculations hydrogen has a hellofalot less environmental impact versus burning dead dinosaurs.

Re:How does it come out?

[johnjaydk]

Favorit quote:

What is the link between Dihydrogen Monoxide and school violence?

A recent stunning revelation is that in every single instance of violence in our country's schools, including infamous shootings in high schools in Denver and Arkansas, Dihydrogen Monoxide was involved. In fact, DHMO is often very available to students of all ages within the assumed safe confines of school buildings. None of the school administrators with which we spoke could say for certain how much of the substance is in use within their very hallways

Re:How does it come out?

[Becquerel]

I agree that making use of someone elses waste is a brilliant way to make money and be efficient. The trouble with nuclear material is that it is reasonably dangerous in modest quantaties as a dirty bomb can quickly make an area uninhabitable and cause large disruption. For this reason it is tightly guarded and held in only a few locations. It's just not practical to have the warming glow of nuclear waste powering everyones hot water bottles, etc.

Re:How does it come out?

[Eric S. Smith]

And if you use nuclear power as your primary means of generating electricity, you can make enough hydrogen that 12% efficiency from an IC engine is just fine.

Why, it'll be Too Cheap to Meter!

Re:How does it come out?

[temojen]

Also, a lot of that Boiling happens underground, by pumping hot water below the water table, thus reducing the supply of water for local agricultural uses.

Re:How does it come out?

[spitefulcrow]

You didn't even read the little submitter blurb, did you? This would be for automotive use. The idea is that you store the hydrogen in these and then add them to a car as a fuel source because the hydrogen removal reaction provides a source of energy. Storing hydrogen for a hydrogen-burning car in water is dumb, because it takes a lot of energy to free hydrogen through electrolysis, and the second law of thermodynamics says you can't break even and get the same amount of energy from burning it.

Re:How does it come out?

[shotfeel]

Biodiesel would be one possibility. The one mentioned in the article was using algea that release hydrogen.

Re:How does it come out?

[quarkscat]

Nuclear energy is not now, nor has ever been, cheap. The one major drawback to nuclear energy is the long term disposal and maintanance of the radioactive waste. Considering that much of high level radioactive waste has a half-life of 12,000 years, it could take 100,000 years for the radioactivity to decrease to the point of causing statistically minimal harm to humans or the environment.

Neither the DoE, the nuclear industry, or the current regime in power has bothered to extrapolate the long 50 - 100,000 year cost of maintaining any radioactive waste disposal site. When the nuclear power proponents can accurately project both the timeline and the total cost of dealing with the radioactive waste, then come back and tell us all just how cheap nuclear energy really is. I definitely would like to see those numbers.

(Any Sci-Fi tale that talks about a future "nuclear priesthood" that keeps watch over all the radioactive nuclear waste does not count as a viable business plan!)

Re:How does it come out?

[Phanatic1a]

While nuclear power is cheap if you measure it in cost per KWH, it's only cheaper if you ignore the health costs.

What health costs? Nuclear power in the US has killed how many people? I think 3, if you cound the SL-1 accident, which wasn't a civilian plant. Certainly under 100. In contrast, something like 50-100,000 people die each year in the US alone because of air pollution. A lot of that's due to indoor pollution, but much of it's because of all the crud fossil fuel plants spit into the air.

Take all the nuclear waste, and dump it right to the bottom of an abyssal trench in plain steel drums, and the health costs would be vastly lower than those caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Per megawatt-hour, nuclear plants release *much* less radioactive material into the atmosphere than coal plants do; those spit out plenty of thorium and uranium, and that's not even mentioning the heavy metals and particulates that cause real damage and kill real people.

The fear about nuclear waste is nothing more than FUD. Volumetrically, we're talking about incredibly tiny quantities of waste. It's really a non-issue, except for the political hysteria.

Solar/wind/hydroelectric? Not practical for generating all the electricity we use right now, let alone all we'd need to use if we want a hydrogen economy. If you want to cut out burning coal and gas, nuclear is the only option.

Re:How does it come out?

[Phanatic1a]

Yep. It's amazing how a good idea can have its implementation prevented by sufficient FUD, isn't it?

Re:How does it come out?

[benjamindees]

can we simply bypass the 'fossilization" requirement?

Yes, you can. Google for "methane digester" or "landfill gas". These methods are already widely used, although the efficiency is not great. There are also ways of producing liquid hydrocarbons from biomass on the horizon, but then you're back to the "burning oil in a car" problem with the pollution and inflexibility it entails.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only advantage to electric vehicles is that they open up the possiblity of using alternate enery sources [..] You don't gain any efficiency at all.

That's a bit untrue.

Electric vehicles also allow far more flexible designs than internal combustion. Like having the electric motors in the wheels - you now have zero energy loss from the powertrain and transmission (because there are none).

And the energy conversion process in the car (chemical to electrical to torque) makes the electric car a more efficient energy conversion device than an internal combustion vehicle.

It almost doesn't matter how the energy got onboard the car in the first place. But yes, you're right - electric vehicles do allow for lots of interesting, renewable and clean alternative energy sources - far better options than digging up oil and making gasoline.

Re:How does it come out?

[jnik]

Umm, no - it's the CO2 lines that are mostly saturated. H2O lines are not saturated - you got that backwards.

Absorption of Earth's atmosphere. Note it's the lines under the 255K curve that determine if heat gets from the ground to space (so look at c, b is for the 5780 curve and solar heating). The principal CO2 line is well away from saturation; the H20 lines are pegged.

Re:How does it come out?

[dave1g]

Man made oil, its almost economical just has to ge to $80 a barrel for oil. We arent far from that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerizat ion/

Re:How does it come out?

[lambadomy]

You're missing an advantage - you also get to burn the fossil fuels somewhere else, away from where all the people live, as opposed to in their cars. And perhaps you can develop economies of scale for pollution reduction by doing it all in one place (underground, etc). Getting the air pollution out of the cities/roads is probably a good thing in itself, even with some loss of efficiency.

Re:How does it come out?

[quantum bit]

That's not what I meant by "way of life". Excess is another matter entirely, and while what you said is an exaggeration, it is something that needs to be dealt with.

What I mean is the practice of living in cities with large populations, mass-production, automating labor, bulk transport of things like fresh food, rising quality of life. Even public transporation needs energy to run. As more nations become developed, we're only going to need more of it.

You can advocate returning to a simpler life if you want, but the fact of the matter is that things like science and technology wouldn't exist without the huge infrastructure of the modern world. Besides, the population is too high already and I doubt we'd be able to do it without billions dying.

Eventually the sun will burn out and all life on this planet will die -- that's a fact. If we're very lucky we won't manage to destroy it ourselves before then. Either way, the technology to move beyond this world is something that needs a staggering amount of energy production and storage.

Oil has been our shortcut to civilization. The energy of hundreds if not thousands of years of sunlight, concentrated and bottled up. When it runs out, we'd damn well better have something else thought up that's at least as good, or people will start dying.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

the advantage is that "hydrogen stored in plain h20" is basically spent fuel. you have to apply energy to seperate the hydrogen -- exactly the energy you want to consume to do work -- so the hydrogen in water is not storing energy the way hydrogen in this stuff or in a fuel cell is.

Re:How does it come out?

[chicago_bulls]

"The second law of thermodynamics (which we obey in this house!) dictates that it will always take more energy to get the free hydrogen that you can ever get back in a fuel cell."

for crying out loud, everytime a story about a new energy source/storage thing comes out why do people always say "well, it'll never work, you have to put more energy in than you can get out."?
i mean, with that train of thought, why not just give up and quit trying to improve anything right now? after all, according to the 2nd law, the universe will eventually become a giant soup of particles of the same temperature so that no work will be able to be done. so, fuck it, let's all just quit now.

Re:How does it come out?

[AndersOSU]

I didn't really follow you there, but it does take energy to create methanol. Just because it is a natural product doen't mean it is energy free.

I don't know that much about methanol directly, but in the case of ethanol production it takes more energy to process it than you get out. Meaning if you made an ethanol plant that used ethanol as its sole source of power you would have to burn all the product AND import ethanol to keep it running.

Re:How does it come out?

[mwood]

Agreed, it makes little sense to design radwaste-powered coffee pots and suchlike. I wasn't thinking of consumer goods, but of industrial processes, or inaccessible devices (think orbiting Neptune) that need small amounts of reliable power for years.

But I think there must be some way to burn up the really energetic stuff even before we move down to this level. A lot of what we throw away is perfectly good reactor fuel, sacrificed because of some mystical connection between known nuclear powers reprocessing spent fuel and development of nuclear explosives by the have-nots.

Re:How does it come out?

[Phanatic1a]

The one major drawback to nuclear energy is the long term disposal and maintanance of the radioactive waste.

Right now, there are coal plants around the globe that are merrily spewing radioisotopes into the atmosphere; some coal has levels of uranium of 10ppm, and even higher levels of thorium, and just the amount of uranium the US has spat into the atmosphere since the 1930s could have, if fissioned instead, provided the entire present-day electrical demand of the entire United Kingdom for centuries. Seriously, I'm not joking. Since 1937, in the course of burning coal the US has dumped 145,000 tons of uranium into the atmosphere. That's 10,440 tons of U-235, which fissions to produce about 17.6 kilotons/kilogram. Fission all that, you get 193 petawatt-hours, which is the current electrical demand of the entire UK for 500 years.

That's real radioactivity, that causes real illness and kills real people. So why isn't burning coal prohibitively expensive? Why doesn't the 'disposal and maintanance of the radioactive waste' drive the cost up?

The reason is because the regulations for dealing with radioactive waste are a joke. They've got little to do with real risks, real costs, and a lot more to do with public fear and hysteria over anything that has the word 'nuclear' in it, which is why if you twist your knee playing football you go to get an MRI scan instead of an NMR scan. If a human being were considered under the regulations dicating the disposal of radioactive waste, then simply the naturally-occurring radioisotopes in the body would make cremation or burial in wooden coffins illegal. But nobody's bothered by that, either because they don't know that all organic matter is radioactive, or because they think that somehow K-40 in organic tissue is different from K-40 that's sitting in a used fuel rod.

Blaming public ignorance, fear, uncertainty, and doubt for the high cost of nuclear power does the best technology we have available to us if we want to maintain our standard of living *and* clean up the planet a great disservice. Right now, every kilowatt-hour we get from burning coal dumps 2.3 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere, so for a country like the UK which gets 74% of its power from burning coal, that's 614 billion pounds of CO2, every year.

There is no way in hell the real costs of handling nuclear waste even come close to the costs of all that pollution. No. Fucking. Way. In contrast, a typical, 1000-MW nuclear plant produces something like 20 tons of high-level waste per year; that's under 50 *pounds* of waste per megawatt of plant capacity, and since it's so dense, volumetrically that's practically negligible.

Much of the high cost of nuclear waste is directly due to stupid-assed government regulations that are based upon the fact that PWRs in this country are a byproduct of nuclear weapons programs. They *prohibit* reactor designs that include fuel recycling, using additional reactor stages to burn the 'waste' produced by earlier stages. Don't want to deal with the waste for 10,000 years? Fine. Dump it into a seafloor subduction zone, by the time it sees the light of day again it won't be any more radioactive than any other molten material that spews forth from the Earth on a daily basis.

Considering that much of high level radioactive waste has a half-life of 12,000 years

If it has a half-life that long, it's not high-level.

Re:How does it come out?

[AndersOSU]

Transmitting power, and IC engines add value. It is more valuable to have power at my home than at the power plant. It is more valuable for me to be able to drive than have a gallon of gas. These things add value.

I'm not sure of methanol, but creating ethanol subtracts value. It takes more units of energy to process the corn than you can get out of the ethanol. There is no additional value of having one unit of enrgy stored in ethanol than one unit of energy stored in gasoline, in fact there is less. It's the same as saying we lose money on every sale, but make up for it in volume.

Re:How does it come out?

[aldousd666]

how are you planning to get it out? Water employs a pair of Covalent bonds, which take a significant amount of energy to release... Electrolysis works, but that's already using electricity...

Re:How does it come out?

[Stephen Ma]

Yet no one seems to be considering what will happen when in fact our cars dump more water on the roadways than rain does now.

More water on the road from cars than from rain? That would only be true in the desert regions. But I'm sure the people there will learn to cope at least as well as the people of the Pacific Rainforest do now.

Re:How does it come out?

[AndersOSU]

No it's worse than that. It takes less energy to process earth oil than is contianed in the oil. Thats why gas is such a convienient form of energy.

It takes more energy to electrolyze water to create hydrogen than is stored in the hydrogen, which is why hydrogen fuel is suspect as a real solution.

The only way to get hydrogen that contains more energy than was used to liberate it is to strip it from hydrocarbons (usually methane.) I'm not sure how the efficiency of stripping hydrogen from methane compares to refining gasoline, but either way you slice it you are still using fossil fuel.

Re:How does it come out?

[DrSkwid]

I was under the impression that was due more to frost than precipitation.

Re:How does it come out?

[Spy Hunter]

You don't gain any efficiency at all [with eletric vehicles].

You don't think one centralized fossil fuel powered turbine plant, operating with a huge economy of scale, with the latest efficiency technology and pollution scrubbers, running at one speed all the time, is more efficient than thousands of poorly-maintained piston engines, purchased more for their power than their efficiency, constantly being started and stopped?

The efficiency gain could be significant, even if electric cars were powered solely by fossil fuel-generated electricity. Furthermore, the pollution could be significantly reduced, and located where it is not as much of a problem (away from city centers).

And another huge advantage is that the energy source can be *changed* at any time, on a moment's notice, simply by switching power plants. We would no longer be dependent on any single energy source to the extent we are on oil today.

Re:How does it come out?

[deanoaz]

People used to steal my bottled water out of the refrigerator at work. I made up some Dihydrogen-Monoxide labels to put on the bottles (with skull and crossbones prominently featured) and the problem was solved.

Re:How does it come out?

[GigsVT]

It's going to take a lot of electricity.

World electrical production (OECD Countries): 9.3 petawatt-hours per year
US gasoline consumption: about 3.9 petawatt-hours per year

So unless you plan on increasing world electrical production a *lot*, we are going to have trouble.

US gas consumption = 320500000 gallons/day
121 megajoules per gallon, 1 megajoule= 1 megawatt second

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

considering the Earth receives 5000 times as much solar energy as we currently use in oil equivalents

Yes, and in 5 seconds the sun puts out as much energy as the human race has ever used in its history. So let's talk about Dyson spheres as long as we're talking about ridiculous shit like "nuclear fusion might be a good alternative", or "solar is a possible solution", or "US nuclear plants are dangerous".

1. If you show me a fusion plant that can achieve a sustained reaction, you must have gone 50 years into the future, at least.

2. At current efficiency levels, it would require a land area equivalent to that of Great Britain and all of its territories to satisfy the current world energy requirements solely with solar panels. That doesn't include the Commonwealth, of course. Just territories that are specifically controlled by Britain.

3. The worst nuclear accident in United States history, Three Mile Island, was the result of a faulty valve and some bad indicator lights. There were no casualties, and the radiation put out probably will never give anyone cancer. The most annoying problem that came out of TMI was realizing that allowing contaminated water to seep into concrete is a really bad idea. The problems at TMI couldn't exist at any other US nuclear plant today.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Know a lot of tree huggers do you? Grr.

For the record, the progressives I run with see the "hydrogen economy" as an empty promise designed by politicians who don't want to risk dealing with the possibility that global demand for energy is increasing at an unsustainable rate.

What we generally like to note is that oil is a finite resource and that we may not be able to find alternatives that sustain current energy use. Therefore, the responsible thing to do would be to simultaneously seek renewable alternatives and gradually reduce overall energy consumption.

Suggesting things like increasing fuel efficiency standards and reducing subsidies on highways and suburban housing in favor of higher density, pedestrian / bike / public-transport friendly living is horribly unpopular. Far easier to pretend that some new tech is going to remake our economy for us before gas prices hit $3, er, $4 or $5 or whatever per gallon and slows our economy down without us being prepared.

Re:How does it come out?

[kevlar]

Nuclear power is only cheap if you measure its cost with an archaic accounting system that cannot apply a major future expense to the period of production that brings that expense about. Most of the cost in the current technology is in handling the waste products over a very long future period. An appropriate solution to recycling or permanently storing nuclear waste is no closer today than it was in 1960.

Maintaining the waste is a miniscule expense in the grand scheme of things. The USA has produced enough nuclear waste from Nuclear Power generation to fill a single football field a meter or two high. Small space, small problem. Burying the crap under Yucca Mountain and maintaining it indefinately is a ridiculously small price to pay for humans to survive on the planet with clean air and water.

We are more likely to see economical cold fusion power generation sooner than we will see an economical solution to the waste problems of fission technology.

Not true. The likelyhood of anyone alive witnessing economical cold fusion is extremely sparse. Nuclear Power right now, at this very moment is economical and the infrastructure to transport that power already exists. The storage facilities face all kinds of social battles because of misinformation disperced by organizations like Green Peace. The fact of the matter is that Nuclear Power does not pollute the air or water, does not produce greenhouse gasses, produces magnitudes less waste overall than fossil fuels and exists today. The current management of waste is to bury it under a mountain in concrete facilities until we know what to do with it. If we never find a solution, then at worse, we move it deeper underground.

Playing off Nuclear Energy like its a destructive source of energy is simply ignorant.

Re:How does it come out?

[roertel]

There are a lot of things in this post to comment on. Generally, the situation is a catch-22. In order to make alternative energy sources / carriers cheaper, there has to be a demand for it, but in order for there to be a demand, it must be cheaper. The bottom line is that if we sit around debating the pros and cons of the different technologies, in the end we'll get nowhere.

There was an article posted here years ago which mentioned an inventor who has invented a hydrogen and oxygen powered rotary-style engine which is far more efficient than today's engines. Although his web site has not been updated in a very long time, it has some interesting ideas.

Article: http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,5 14029,00.html

Web Site: http://www.mcmastermotor.com/about_us.htm

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm... Don't the trucks that I see delivering gas to my local gas station have to drive back empty? At least these are serving a purpose both ways.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi.

You're retarded.

Just thought I'd let you know.

--AC

Re:How does it come out?

[TigerNut]

That's not correct - you're thinking of SAGD extraction (steam-assisted gravity drainage) or something like it, which has been done in Wyoming at great ecological cost.

The tarsands are worked as an open pit mine. BIG Bucket wheels, draglines, and shovel-and-dump-truck operations get the overburden off of the tar sands. Then the tar sand and some regular sand (the shovel operators judge the mix by eye) are put in 300 ton dump trucks and taken to the central processing operation where it's mixed with water and heated to separate the oil from the sand. Afterward the sand and the overburden are put back, but it still takes a long time for things to regrow.

Been there, rode the shovel, surveyed the mine roads with GPS. It's a damn impressive operation.

Re:How does it come out?

[uberdave]

NMR is poorly named, though, because it has nothing to do with altering the nucleus of the atoms. There are no changes to the proton or neutron counts, no particles emitted or absorbed. In short, it is not "nuclear" in the common usage of the word. MRI is vastly more descriptive of the process.

Re:How does it come out?

[CFTM]

Especially if people start to get a little crazy with their ice-9 ... dihydrogen monoxide + ice-9 = lots and lots of unhappiness!

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't gain any efficiency at all. Not everybody is aware of that fact.

That's because it isn't quite a fact. As another poster added, regenerative braking can add efficiency to electric vehicles.

Additionally, electric vehicles have the advantage of being more or less instant-on / instant-off. If you drive in stop & go traffic, as many many Americans do every day, electric vehicles suddenly become way more efficient than internal combustion. The electric engine is completely off when you're coasting and you just use a small amount of power each time you need to inch forward.

I wish I had a site with a study to determine efficiency in that situation (anyone?). I know it is better than leaving an internal combustion engine running at idle, though.

Re:How does it come out?

[Phanatic1a]

Wow, is that wrong.

NMR hits the sample atoms with a pulse of radio energy that *alters the spin of atomic nucleii*.

NMR is, strangely enough, concerned with the magnetic resonance of atomic nucleii, and directly changes the magnetic moment of those nucleii, which is directly related to the spin direction. It's not concerned with the magnetic moment of the electrons, but rather with the atomic *nucleus*.

Thus, it's called nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. Or at least it was, until FUD over anything involving the word 'nuclear' led the marketers to rename it.

Re:How does it come out?

[Squiggle]

The only advantage to electric vehicles is that they open up the possiblity of using alternate enery sources...

Electric vehicles can also reduce energy waste through regenerative braking, not idling, etc.

Re:How does it come out?

[TheDracle]

I think people need to stop reading, and spreading, the oil industry funded Popular Science propaganda. If I'm not mistaken, the source of energy for all living organisms comes, directly or indirectly, from the process of photosynthesis, which involves separating H2O into hydrogen and oxygen (which accounts for oxygen being a large component our atmosphere). The hydrogen atoms are then used for production of ATP and NADPH. I think your conclusion lacks incite to what future innovations may come about, and about what natural processes already exist. If life can do it, why can't we? Hydrogen 'can' be relatively pollution free, as is illustrated by living organisms. There have already been experiments involving disruption of photosynthesis in simple algae by depriving them of salt, which results in release of hydrogen. I'm assuming, as we become better at bioengineering, and understanding cellular processes, it becomes more and more likely that we will be able to find means to perform the same processes through artificial or biological means.

Re:How does it come out?

[swelke]

Remember, however, that the initial electricity need not come from an expensive fossil fuel like petroleum. Coal costs, on average, about half as much per BTU as does oil. If done correctly, it could even come from electricity that would otherwise be wasted (ie "off-peak" hours). Coal burning power plants take days to change their power level dramatically, so during months where the power load shifts dramatically, the power company can offer cheaper industrial power rates on off times, which would be the best time to do this kind of work. Of course, there's always solar and wind power, which are time-inconsistent enough that this would be great for them too.

Re:How does it come out?

[Optic7]

Oooooh! So I DO drive a solar-powered car after all!

/homer

Re:How does it come out?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

And if it's not economically viable to use alternatives today, wait until next month when the price of gas goes up another $1/gal, and if it's still not viable, wait another month. :)

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Atmospheric water is not a gas. It is a vapor. Perhaps you were thinking about steam, but any steam that reaches the atmosphere quickly condenses into water vapor.

Re:How does it come out?

[dAzED1]

not following you there. necar5 doesn't have additional outside power sources, it just has methanol.

The point of me saying pathways for hydrolizing exist that are all exothermic reactions is that all the reactions release energy, instead of requiring it (endothermic). So the process of taking it from methane to plain old hydrogen releases energy, then the hydrogen itself is used to supply the fuel cell. There isn't a generator driven by an IC engine that is supplying energy to hydrolyze the methane. There are several real-world power plants that actually produce power that are fed just methane (well, natual gas).

In the case of necar5, it was a complete system. No fuel cells, no nuclear reactor...just methanol in the tank. A 75 kilowatt (homes average what, like 2KW?) fuel cell then powered electric motors, which turned the wheels. There was certainly better than a zero-sum or negative-sum system involved, else...well, it wouldn't have been producing 75KW. I'm repeating things because I thought they were obvious before.

Re:How does it come out?

[Lord Apathy]

There are plenty of ways to deal with the long term storage of nuclear waste. People just don't want to commit to it.

With conventional oil drilling technology is it possible to drill for oil with. Drill a hole into the ocean floor in a Subduction zone. On average I think you will drill through 1 mile of sediments. Then you drill a farther 1 mile into the ocean floor. Or hell, why stop at 2 miles down, current technology can drill down 4 or 5 miles easy. Encase the waste in glass, grind up the glass in to pellets and dump them in the hole.

Leave about a mile of the hole empty, the sediment layer, at the top. Then pile in the sediments that was removed, about a mile of it.

Problem solved. You've put the waste out of the environment. By putting it in to a Subduction plate it will be carried down into the earth where it will be cooked for a few billion years at 5,000 degrees.

I'm pretty sure I over simplified the problem but both the technology and theory are mature enough to be refined.

Re:How does it come out?

[misleb]

The bottom line is that electricity has a certain value. It doesn't matter how it is generated. Currently electricity is valued much higher than chemical (gasoline) energy per kWh. Even before the 12% conversion effiency, using electrcity for cars isn't economical. It can't compete with fossil fuels (yet). Now consider the 12% (in)efficiency of converting and using hydrogen as fuel in cars. It just isn't goign to happen.

You just can't say "oh, just use a cheap source of electricity." It doesn't work that way. If I am a power company who can sell electricity for $0.25/kWh on the retail market, why in the world would I bother converting that to hydrogen which would sell to consumers for a lot less as auto fuel.

Some quick math: A gallon of gasoline contains about 60 kWh or energy. Say gas costs $3/gallon. Even at this relatively high gas price, you're only paying $0.05 per kWh!

If you were to convert electricty (at $.25/kWh) to hydrogen, you would pay $15 for a gallon of gas worth of energy!

-matthew

Re:How does it come out?

[smithmc]

  You give something potential energy by lifting it up. With hydrogen we are talking about chemical energy. It's kind of like potential energy except...

No, it is potential energy. Gravitational potential energy is only one kind of potential energy; chemical potential energy is another.

Re:How does it come out?

[patently obvious nam]

Wrong, There are a variety of synergistic efficiencies with electric vehicles. Regenerative braking turns otherwise wasted energy back into electricity for re-use rather than throwing it away as heat. Thats why the Ford Escape hybrid gets better milage in the city than on the highway. Lighter power plant and no brakes means the car weighs less. Since the car weighs less you need less power and lighter wheels and suspension. Lower Rolling resistance wheels can be used (which are lighter. Lower power means lighter power plant . . . Repeat a few times. etc. Power generation is centralized and therefore more efficient. Oh and by the way, these cars are quiet.

Re:How does it come out?

[Sir.Grok]

There are plans on the works now for GEN IV Nuclear Reactors that will produce mass quantities of hydrogen via thermochemical reactions. This gets around the problem of electrolysis. Hydrogen is the way of the future.

Re:How does it come out?

[clone22]

I think cost of extracting methanol from coal is somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.86/gal. Not sure what the nasty byproducts are or what other uses they may have such as pharmaceuticals, foam weiner containers, and other necessities.

Doesn't palladium store 9x its weight in hydrogen?

Re:How does it come out?

[Phronesis]

To make hydrogen you do not make electricity from coal and electrolyze water. That's incredibly inefficient. You burn coal in the presence of water vapor (coal gasification). The carbon grabs oxygen from the water, producing CO and leaves hydrogen behind. This is much more energy efficient.

Megajoule for megajoule, steam reformation of coal into hydrogen is much cheaper than electrolysis from wind power. As to controlling emissions, we have zero technology to control CO2 emissions from coal plants and a megajoule of hydrogen produced from coal produces many times as much CO2 as a megajoule of gasoline burned in an internal combustion engine.

Moreover gasoline simply does not have mercury, so it's easier to control mercury emissions from automobile tailpipes (do nothing) than from coal burning facilities (expensive filters/scrubbers).

Finally, as I said before, the environmental impact of coal mines is thousands of times worse than the impact of oil wells.

Re:How does it come out?

[promethean_spark]

Uranium isn't in itself harmful, it already naturally occurs in the soil in much greater quantities than is released from coal plants. The byproducts of fission are what is harmful, in nature they're produced at such a tiny rate that they are inconsequential, but in a reactor they build up to hazardous levels and must be dealt with accordingly.

Re:How does it come out?

[njh]

The oil from TD is clearly less energetic than its inputs. And we use far more oil as fuel than for plastics and whatnot (I think products are about 7% of total oil consumption). So if we used our current 50 year supply of petro-waste to produce oil we'd use it all up in less than 3 years. We could use TD to make oil out of say biomass, but then we'd be better off with biodiesel, which is a more efficient conversion.

Re:How does it come out?

[njh]

Actually, LEDs aren't very efficient, last I looked they were more efficient than incandesent (but that's not hard :), but less than compact fluoros. The high pressure sodium lights, which have that characteristic yellow glow are probably the most efficient light source out there. Particularly as they emit solely in one of the more sensitive regions of our vision. This means that the effective illumination per watt is even greater. There is a cost to having white light.

LEDs make lots of sense for specialist task lighting - I have leds set up to illuminate things at night which means I made our whole house navigable in the darkest night using only 1W of electricity. Far better than lots of electroluminescent night lights, and not as sickly :)

Re:How does it come out?

[njh]

You are wrong. The payback for bio-ethanol is about 2.5*. The payback for biodiesel is about 3.5*. Biodiesel rises to nearly 5 in suitable climates when the straw is also burnt for energy.

You have to put energy into to get access to any energy (this is called activation energy). It is the ration between the input and the put that is important, and for crude (Acording to posters yesterday) this is about 5*.

The payback for wind is about 20*.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uranium is classified as a toxin. Specifically, if inhaled or ingested, it can prove to be quite toxic above certain levels.

The problem with Coal power pumping Uranium out isn't that "OMGZ, it isn't in nature!", it is the fact that you are pumping a toxin into the air for people to /inhale/, and Uranium also has mutagenic properties as well IIRC.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Treehugger. Yeah Right. Money talks my friend.

I guess you don't realize that with only 25% of the rooftops of existing buildings filled with solar panels of _todays_ efficiency, there will be enough energy to power the entire US (electricity plus gasoline).

I guess you don't realize that with a windmill park the size of one of the windy states in the US, there will be enough energy to power the entire US (electricity plus gasoline).

That already is double the energy that we're using today.

Wind energy is now less than 2x the price of fossil fuels, solar is more expensive at $50/watthour but going down quickly.

Use solar and wind energy to create hydrogen, put that in these pellets, transport then to the gas station, people's generators at home, etc.

Additionally, using these pellets to buffer the variable nature of solar and wind energy and you'll have a hard time finding and extracting oil that beats that system economically.

I did not have to mention environmentally...

Re:How does it come out?

[GrahamCox]

NOTE - never use the term "energy source" when referring to hydrogen because it only carries energy that has to come from somewhere else

True. But photosynthesis is a very efficient way of storing solar radiation as a hydrocarbon, and is totally renewable. If we grew fuel as we needed it instead of digging up previously sequestered stuff it would be carbon neutral, as well as providing a lucrative new form of agriculture. With genetic engineering we could probably bio-engineer a plant that was particularly suitable for fuel production, so that the amount of additional processing beyond harvesting was minimised. Surely it's got to be worth looking into?

Re:How does it come out?

[0x0000]

The tree huggers of this world like to think that we can supply hydrogen with windmills, solar, and tidal power.

That statement is soooo 20th century.

Now while these alternate energy sources certainly merit investment we are a looong way from being able to produce anywhere near the energy needed to supply millions of autos with hydrogen.

Only if you continue to think in terms of centralized power sources and distribution networks, I think. Nevertheless, there a megawatts of electrical and wind generation facilities coming online a increasingly frequent intervals. I think it's very short-sighted to claim that we're anywhere close to seeing inadequacy to demand from these sources. Obviously, this will continue to be an arguing point, but I think even the most skeptical observers should be stopping short of ruling the possiblity out, at this point.

We'll call them hydrocarbons, so that Susie Homemaker won't immediately pick up on the problem that hydrocarbons are foreign oil.

Hmmm. I'm no chemist, but isn't methane a hydrocarbon? See the article at http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/stor y?id=32730 for an article about producing hydrogen from methane at dump sites. And of course, methane is widely available at sites like the massive factory farms in the midwestern US.

Btw, Susie is pissed that you don't think she knows what hydrocarbons are - she says it's Joe (Sixpack) that was not in class that day, but I'll let her deal with you personally about that...

Re:How does it come out?

[0x0000]

.... . There are a lot of uses for radioactive material that don't involve big bangs or boiling water by the kiloton. Primitive societies know how to use every scrap of an animal they've taken. We need to think seriously about how to do the same with industrial processes.

I agree with you in principle - that there's really no such thing as "waste" - only things we haven't figured out yet. However, I'm not entirely convinced that the uses that have been found for spent nueclear fuel so far - I.E. irraditating food products (pork in particular) - are a good idea.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, this shows the typical perception of "nuclear".
To the uninformed person (i.e. most people "informed" by the media) nuclear means **RADIATION** (umm, whatever that is, but it's bad, right?) as indicated by the parent's assertion "...altering the nucleus of the atoms ... changes to the proton or neutron counts... particles emitted or absorbed" - i.e. radiation.
Nuclear, of course, simply means "having to do with the nucleus". Unless you're one of those who cross yourself when the N-word is spoken.

Re:How does it come out?

[Surt]

Not at all, road damage is mainly due to softening of the roads during heavy rains, which then allows cars to begin grinding little bits out, which leads to potholes, which are then self-compounding. Areas with no frost but heavy rains have very heavy road damage every rain season.

Re:How does it come out?

[0x0000]

But I think there must be some way to burn up the really energetic stuff even before we move down to this level.

Almost certainly. Research money should be applied here.

A lot of what we throw away is perfectly good reactor fuel, sacrificed because of some mystical connection between known nuclear powers reprocessing spent fuel and development of nuclear explosives by the have-nots.

I think the Fear surrounding used nuclear power plant fuel pre-dates the present day focus on Terror. The main problem that is known to have occured surrounding used nuclear fuel - afaik - is increased cancer rates among populations that are exposed to it - that are exposed to increased background radiation levels, in general, actually.

I myself find it conconcievable that we still don't seem to have any practical way of using that radiation - it is, after all, energy in one of its most basic forms. Is there no such thing as a photo-voltaic-type cell that could produce current from the radiation from this fuel as it decays?

Re:How does it come out?

[starman97]

You're only counting the fuel rods themselves,
the entire reactor vessel is waste. All the cooling pipes are contaminated, the gloves worn by the techs that handle the fuel, etc. There's a lot of non-fuel grade waste produced by a plant over it's 30 year lifetime. Those wastes have half-lives in the 1y-10Kyr
range. There are a lot of radioactive isotopes produced as a byproduct of fission, these are non-useful, and some are biologically active, in that, they can get into the food chain. The volume of this stuff is huge.

Re:How does it come out?

[HornWumpus]

Motors in the wheels is very bad idea. Have you ever heard the term 'unsprung weight'? Look it up.

The fact you have more of the energy conversion process outside the car does'nt do anything to the overall effeciency of the system.

It very much matters how the energy go onboard the car in the first place.

Re:How does it come out?

[Phanatic1a]

The bottom line is that electricity has a certain value. It doesn't matter how it is generated.

Of course it does. That's why people willingly pay *more* for power generated from clean sources. There are utility companies that *offer* people the chance to pay *higher* utility rates for the assurance that they'll be using windpower, and people pay that.

Currently electricity is valued much higher than chemical (gasoline) energy per kWh.

I'm certainly not aware of where you're getting *that* notion. A gallon of gas right by my house sells for $3.19 at the moment, and a gallon of gas comes out to about 33 kilowatt-hours. Electricity, on the other hand, goes for about 8 cents per kilowatt-hour, so 33 kilowatt-hours comes out to only $2.64. So it's *not* valued much higher than gasoline.

If I am a power company who can sell electricity for $0.25/kWh on the retail market, why in the world would I bother converting that to hydrogen which would sell to consumers for a lot less as auto fuel.

Because you stand to profit from the sale of hydrogen. You can't just make more money by increasing the supply of electricity.

A gallon of gasoline contains about 60 kWh or energy. Say gas costs $3/gallon. Even at this relatively high gas price, you're only paying $0.05 per kWh!

You're off by a factor of two. Here.

Just to check my figures. The figures on that page average 44.6 MJ/kg, gasoline has a density of .8 g/cc, so one US gallon (3785cc) weighs about 3 kilograms, that's 133.8 MJ, that's 37 kilowatt-hours. Still less expensive than an equivalent energy-amount of gasoline.

Granted, a lot of that cost/gallon is taxes, not the real cost of the gas, but that sort of artificial price inflation is also at work in the retail cost of electricity.

If you were to convert electricty (at $.25/kWh) to hydrogen, you would pay $15 for a gallon of gas worth of energy!


No, you wouldn't. At that price of electricity (Which is really a high figure, according to the DOE, for the year 2003 the average cost nationwide was 8.7 cents per kWh, so most power companies *can't* sell electricity for $.25/kWh. Those same DOE figures claim that the highest electricity costs in the nation are in Hawaii, at 14.47 cents/kWh. I believe that during the Enron debacle in California, prices went up to 20 cents. So, really, you're using a 'typical' value that is actually considerably higher than the worst absurdities the market has been able to generate. But moving on... ), you'd be paying $9.25.

Re:How does it come out?

[dave1g]

can you make bio diesel out of raw sewage? and garbage. most of which is just random hydro carbons not necessarily petroleum derived. food, animal, plant waste plus plastics, paper etc.

Re:How does it come out?

[mandos]

Electrolyzing water is short sighted because it's ineffeicent? The city of Los Angeles owns several coal power plants outside of California. One of those is a 1.6GW plant in central Utah. They ran wires 480-some miles to LA at about a 40% loss in electricial energy. This provides roughly 25% of LA's power, if I remember correctly. This is seems more "short sighted".

As far as solar plants being for "tree huggers" I suggest you look into "solar concentrators" (as opposed to photovoltaics: solar panels). These use mirrors to concentrate the light onto one spot that is typically filled with an oil or salt mixture. This in turn is stored in large tanks and as needed used to heat water to steam. From there the rest of the plant works like a coal or nuclear power plant. Beyond having no pollution (not even thermal, as the heat was collected, not created), there is no input fuel with a volitale price (example: oil in the past 2 years). The only disadvantage is like all power plants it's costly to start up. However, place one or several in Neveda or Arizona, near the gulf of California and you have a Very sunny region near lots of water. The price of electrolysis could drop to zero if the system (physical and economic) were well designed. Meaning that excess heat gathered and not sold as electricity could be converted to hydrogen fuel.

Summary: Conversion would be very pricey. However the payoff is a long term stable solution: stable for poltics, the enviroment and economy. Fewer-->No forgein conflicts over fuel, much less pollution (cars and power plants), and more homegrown jobs (to offset jobs lost due to fewer oil refinaries).

Re:How does it come out?

[tehdaemon]

We did not have to make the sun, the wind, the waves, or the fossil fuels. For the most part, we do have to make the hydrogen.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't palladium store 9x its weight in hydrogen?

Uh, no. Palladium is fairly heavy, if you were to put 9x its mass into the same volume it would weigh more than gold. No known material is that dense.

Palladium can store 900x its volume in hydrogen but this is because hydrogen at atmospheric pressure isn't very dense.

Re:How does it come out?

[jelle]

According to the National Center for Photovoltaics, only 7% of the surface area's of cities have to be photovoltaic to supply _all_ power.

Don't underestimate the power of the future solar rooftop.

Re:How does it come out?

[RingDev]

Wow! That's an awesome site! I wish I had known about it a month ago. I put together a distributed power generation term paper last month for a humanities class.

The big thing I'm thinking of is excess day power, neighborhood hydrogen generators, and nightly hydrogen fuel cell power generators. You could reduce the immediate scope of the grid to a neighborhood level and drop centralised grid power demands to a trickle.

-Rick

Re:How does it come out?

[snookums]

The other option is, well ironic. We need fuel cells to free ourselves from foreign oil. So we'll get the hydrogen from hydrocarbons. We'll call them hydrocarbons, so that Susie Homemaker won't immediately pick up on the problem that hydrocarbons are foreign oil.

Yeah! It's not as if hydrocarbons grow on trees.

Oh, wait...

Re:How does it come out?

[Breakfast Pants]

Is that a joke?

Re:How does it come out?

[njh]

I'm sure it's possible to make oil out of sewage. But it's not going to have much energy left in it - already the body has pulled most of the calorific value out. For a start you need to get all the water out - I bet that the energy required to dry it is probably more than the embodied energy (and if you dry it with the sun, well you'll get more energy out of using that sunlight directly).

The garbage argument was covered in my original post, I thought. Basically we can put a bound on the available energy by considering the relative quantities of crude required to provide energy and to provide plastics feedstock.

TD will be more important as a way to avoid landfill and to capture valuable elements than as a source of energy.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure it's the spin of the electrons that's being altered in NMR. There is an even older name for MRI than NMR, which is "paramagnetic electron resonance."

Re:How does it come out?

[jelle]

Ahh, finally. Somebody on /. who apparently gets it.

Very refreshing.

There are too many people comparing MPG values with gasoline, and talking about nuclear and other bull.

Re:How does it come out?

[portforward]

Oh, thank you for posting this. I saw a very similar article posted on the wall of the physics department wall a decade ago. I've never seen any follow up information. Do you have a link or some sort of article?

Re:How does it come out?

[realilskater]

a catalyst

Re:How does it come out?

[RingDev]

Don't get me wrong, I love the solar power. And I'm all for wind farms in appropriate locations. But it has to fiscally make sence. In the last week I have done numerous write ups on the break even point for gas vs electric cars. If you have a gas powered internal combustion car that gets 30 mpg, and you drive 10k miles per year, and you are looking to replace your vehicle, then $3.00/gal is the magic barrier for cost efficiency. At $3/gal and $.20/kWh you are breaking even on fuel costs (including battery pack replacement every 3 years).

The big problem with electric cars is range however. Common Batteries (The cheaper deep cycle ones) are only going to last 3-5 years, and their performance will degrade over that time. Most DC conversions (the cheapest and least efficient option) are only going to get you a 40-80 mile range in the best of conditions. Which is fine for most in-town or close to town commuters. For those of us out in the boonies, we need a better battery. And there are 2 options, Lith Ion batteries, which dramatically out perform Lead Acid batteries in many ways, but cost about 8 to 10x as much. Or fuel cells. Hydrogen fuel cells are batteries for the most part. Just instead of storing electricity in a reactive chemical form, it is stored in the form of potential energy of hydrogen. But there is no current distribution system for hydrogen, and even if you use your excess solar power to split water, you still have to crompress it to 10k psi or cool it to a liquid to manage to get enough of it in to a vehicle storage system to be usefull.

Solar power won't solve all of our problems, but it is a big step in the right direction. And it's getting to the point where it is financially sound to invest in, IF you were going to invest in roofing anyways. Its still not economical to install solar shingles/roofing/arrays into existing structures though.

-Rick

Re:How does it come out?

[moro_666]

>>> First of all, water is the major greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

this is a bit wrong, because water never turns into gas, water can be heated up in air to turn into steam, but it never turns into a *gas*. so it can't be a greenhouse gas.

ofcourse it's responsible for the heating effect in the sunlight, we wouldn't be chatting here in slashdot if we had no air with water around us, we'd freeze to death.

but if you define water as a responsible material for heating up earth in the sun, you should add oxygen and nitrogen too and every other thing that you see.

i must admit i was a bit unprecise when i was defining it as a non greenhouse material, because i was trying to define greenhouse stuff as stuff that we produce and that really has some kind of effect (i dont think 6 billion cars producing water would make much difference, especially if you consider the fact that all cars now shoot steam along with co2 out of their tubes too).

now as for the usa fact, usa is only about 5-6% the population of earth, we know that you people drive inhumanly fuel eating cars (and we think its a bit odd). but you should try to look over the border of your "great" country and see that other people use cars that need 6 litres of gas for 100km and a local heat station running 9 months a year produces far more co2 than cars over here for example.

power stations may be more effective, but the still shoot out massive amounts of co2, even the electricity that is used to make me type here is produced by burning the old goold coal. i dont know about you there on the other side of the ocean, but our country definetly uses more electricity and heating per hour in kW than our cars do.

Re:How does it come out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, I had a bit of trouble trying to get your numbers to work. In particular 17.6kiloton/kg. I assumed you meant 17.6kJ/kilogram, but it looks like you mean kiloton of TNT. Even using 4.18E12 J/kiloton of TNT I still can't get the numbers to work quite correctly.

Anyway, I think the conversion factor your looking for is probably far more like 37kJ/kg based on figures in
http://www.uic.com.au/ueg.htm

do you have sources for the other figures (US coal usage, and ppm of uranium)?

Re:How does it come out?

[uberdave]

No, the parent is right. They are altering the spin of the protons in hydrogen atoms. Although if the magnetic field is strong enough to affect the properties of a proton, it is probably more than strong enough to affect electrons as well.

Re:How does it come out?

[Firethorn]

Don't forget the method of electrolosys they developed for nuclear plants that has the highest efficiency ever.

I believe it's a combination of high heat(waste heat), a catalyst, and electricity.

Re:How does it come out?

[Martin Blank]

this is a bit wrong, because water never turns into gas, water can be heated up in air to turn into steam, but it never turns into a *gas*. so it can't be a greenhouse gas.

You're really not helping yourself. When water boils, it goes from a liquid form to a gaseous form. Steam is just vaporized water. But just in case you don't believe me, you're welcome to check these sources for validation.

ofcourse it's responsible for the heating effect in the sunlight, we wouldn't be chatting here in slashdot if we had no air with water around us, we'd freeze to death.
If it's a gas that captures and holds the heat from the sun, warming the ambient temperature above that which it would be without an atmosphere, then it's acting like a greenhouse, and such is a greenhouse gas.

but if you define water as a responsible material for heating up earth in the sun, you should add oxygen and nitrogen too and every other thing that you see.

I'm sure they contribute to some extent, but not nearly to that which water, methane, and carbon dioxide do.

but you should try to look over the border of your "great" country and see that other people use cars that need 6 litres of gas for 100km

Not sure where you are, but that's 39 miles per gallon, and while it is higher than the average car mileage, we have plenty of vehicles that get that kind of mileage and higher. One of my cars (the one I use for leisure) gets about half of that, and the one (the one I drive to work and which is now about 12 years old) gets 75% of that. Not too terrible.

a local heat station running 9 months a year produces far more co2 than cars over here for example
Judging by your e-mail address, you live in Estonia, which has a much colder climate than the average US resident has to protect against, so it's not surprising that you put more into heating than you do into transportation. That does not negate my position that a significant fraction of emitted CO2 is released by vehicles. It may not be that way for you, or for Lithuania, or Finland, but it is that way for many other nations.

power stations may be more effective, but the still shoot out massive amounts of co2, even the electricity that is used to make me type here is produced by burning the old goold coal.

Yes, they do, which is why I am far more comfortable with nuclear power. In fact, some of the electricity I'm using comes from a nuclear power plant, which means that there is zero CO2 being released. During the day, some of the power comes from a solar plant, and perhaps some from wind. Most of the rest for me comes from methane-fired power plants, which are even more efficient than coal.

Re:How does it come out?

[BobPaul]

plant where otherwise wasted hi temperatures and electricity (you can't turn off the reator at night)

Why the hell would you turn the reactor off at night? Nobody turns off (or even slows) their coal electric generators at night...
--
Downloading in Firefox got you down? Cheer up

Re:How does it come out?

[dave1g]

TDP cheats, the energy used to remove the water is actually the same energy used to break down the organic molecules. TDP requires water. The water is heated for pressure to break down the organics, it is then quickly depressurised causing it to boil off rapidly. Instant dry! :-)

It is laughable to say that the body has pulled out most of the caloric value, the body cant process any fiber, and is no where near 100% efficient in using the energy inside sugars, fats, and protiens. Also the sewage wouldn't produce "net" oil. But it does.

Also on the trash front, yes it is possible to put a bound on the ammount of oil produceable by TDP. It is directly proportional to the world's output of garbage, sewage, and other waste products. I'll give a rough estimate below.

And yes TDP will if nothing else be a better way to take care of waste reclamation problems. however I think you grossly misunderestimate the amount of waste the world produces.

a quick google produces

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1993/ environ/ENV005.HTM/

"Your first question on the average number of pounds of trash produced by Illinois residents has a rather shocking answer. My sources say that we produce about five pounds of trash per person per day. While this may not seem too extreme, consider that the people of India produce only 1/2 pound of trash per person per day, 10 times less"

and here

http://www.metro-region.org/article.cfm?articleid= 5579/
"Each individual generates about 1.5 tons of solid waste per year - about 4.5 pounds per person, per day. If we continue this pattern, we will have each created 90,000 pounds of trash in our lifetimes.
Environmental Protection Agency, "Resource Conservation Challenge: Reducing Waste and Recovering Energy," EPA 530-F-02-033, 2002"

So lets assume the world average is 1 lb per person per day. assuming America is the highest and india is on the lowend. (and we will not consider the industrial waste products which are actually many many times more massive than the indvidual waste so this is a VERY lowball estimate)

6 billion people * 1 lb * 365 day / year = 2,190,000,000,000 ~ 2.1 billion lbs of waste per year (i dont believe this even includes sewage)

Assuming we used TDP to convert it all to oil at the sewage rate of 26% we get 569,400,000,000 ~ 500 billion lbs of oil per year.

http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_materials.htm/

Oil, petroleum (881 kg) / (cubic meters)

google calculator...

(881 kg) / (cubic meters) = 7.35230135 pound / US gallon

500 billion / (7.35230135 pound / US gallon) = 68 Billion gallons per year ... / 42 gallons per barrel = ~ 1.6 billion barrels of oil per year

1.6 billion / 365 = ~ 4,383,561 barrels of oil per day ...

The world pumps ~ 30 - 40 million barrels of oil per day. (OPEC is at 25ish so I estimated)

TDP can provide 10% of the World oil production. And as we get onto the other side of the Hubbert peak, that percentage will grow higher and higher.

-----------------

Does this solve the complete energy problem? No.

Is it a big step? Yes.

Will purposefully created fuels(biodiesel) be part of the equation also? Yes, but rememebr with TDP we can reclaim some of the waste at each cycle.

Will TDP provide better, more sustainable ways to clean sewage & provide drinking water, dispose of trash, and keep more energy in the loop? YES

Man that took way too long....

Re:How does it come out?

[ArtStone]

Depending on which State you live in, of that $3.19 per gallon (which may only be temporary), from $.26 to $.53 of that price is State and Federal Taxes

How do we pay to build and repair the roads if everyone switched to electric cars? Excise taxes on electricity? Tolls? "Tax the Rich"?

Re:How does it come out?

[Vintermann]

Right - and CO2 injection is actually possibility. AFAIK it's technically and energy-effeiciently viable, but too expensive yet.

Re:How does it come out?

[Cili]

The whole point in storing hydrogen is to use it later as an energy source. If you 'store' it in H2O you'll have to use energy to 'remove' it from H2O, and that energy is theoretically the same amount you would get back when you use the hydrogen.

Re:How does it come out?

[Jwink3101]

It takes electricity in order to get hydrogen from water. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis Now there are other ways to store hydrogen. One simply being in a tank. There are other sponge-like materieal that will do a great job but once they are contaminated, they are useless. This new tech seems promising.

Re:How does it come out?

[mwood]

Easy. Pump the sludge through thermocouple banks and you extract a bit of energy. Whether it's more than you need to run the pump, I haven't done the math to say. Possibly you could build a gadget that pumps itself convectively and only have standby pumps to handle excursions from the desired rates of reactivity. Some of it is so cool you could solidify it around the thermoelectric components and just have a big block that emits electricity. Embed the generating components in layers of cadmium or something if need be.

Possibly you could do something with amorphous semiconductors (which might hold up better than structured semiconductors in the face of micro-damage from the radiation). IIRC that turned out to be neither as amazing as some believed, nor as amazingly stupid as others believed.

It's hard to say what we could do, since so many seems determined not to think about it.

But the plutonium that we throw away is exactly what some reactor designs want. We already know exactly how to use it. And it's some of the worst stuff. It makes sense to burn it up to make something we need. It's more dangerous to store it. It makes no sense whatsoever for any member of the "Nuclear Club" to discard it in the name of nonproliferation -- we've already *got* The Bomb. And taking Pu out of the "ash" makes the problem smaller.

Don't forget medical applications. Radiation can be used therapeutically. The quantities of material in individual applications are quite small, so Bad Guys would have to make quite a lot of thefts to have enough for a credible radiologic weapon. We use such stuff already, you know.

Re:How does it come out?

[jelle]

Now that you're making calculations anyway, imagine I have an electric or hybrid car, then if I put solar panels on the roof of my car, park it in the Florida sun all day, then how many free miles (feet/meters?) per day of driving would I get per square foot (meter) of solar panel?

Re:How does it come out?

[RingDev]

My memory is a bit foggy, but I beleive most DC systems us about .45kWh per mile. AC systems I think were in the .17-.28 range. So it entirely matters on the amount of surface space, the amount of solar energy you receive, and the efficiency of the panels.

This site: http://www.solarnavigator.net/thin_film_solar_cell s.htm has a 1.5v 330mA thin film solution, that's about half a watt per cell. Over a nine hour day parked in the sun you'd be looking at 4.5Wh (.0045kWh) per cell. so you would need about 100 of them to get 1 "free" mile. At 19cm x 5 cm you would have to have one heck of a large car to hold them all. Even for the most efficient AC systems you would still need 38 to get your 1 free mile. In any case, it's not very economically feasible to count on vehicle based solar cells for power.

But if you are using a battery powered moped, and you have a fold/roll out solar array, you may be able to get enough juice while at work to power the bike for a few miles.

-Rick

Re:How does it come out?

[Golias]

You are correct that big power plants are more efficient than the little ones in cars, but then you lose a crapload of energy by sending down miles and miles of copper wire, and yet even more when you transmit that energy into whatever you will use to contain it (batteries, H2, whatever). Yet another wash, in the end.

All this talk of locating plants away from the city is great, if you live in Phoenix. Who cares about a little soot out in the desert? As a Minnesotan, I don't want our beautiful woods choked by massive coal plants any more than is absolutely needed for our basic electrical needs.

Also, until somebody comes up with electric jets, we will continue to need oil for both commercial travel and our military capacity, regardless of what people drive to work in. Oil availability is a national security issue, whether people want to face that fact or not. It's every bit as important as the bullets we supply our infantry with.

Re:How does it come out?

[Golias]

Lighter power plant and no brakes means the car weighs less. Since the car weighs less you need less power and lighter wheels and suspension.

1. All fo the electric cars currently on the market are actually heavier if you don't count the body panels and frame. You could make a VW Bug with an aluminum frame and fiberglass panels and it would also be very light, but I would not want to ride in it. Hydrogen storage replacing batteries might change that... time will tell.

2. You would be freaking insane to drive a car with no friction brakes at all. The Ford Escape has disk breaks like every other car, it just doesn't use them when slowly decelerating.

Re:How does it come out?

[Spy Hunter]

Electric transmission over power lines is quite efficient. The figure I saw when researching my above post was 1.5% transmission loss, which is pretty darn good. Distributing the oil has transmission losses too, you know. I can't speak to the efficiency of the conversion in batteries, but I'm betting you don't have those figures either. Saying that it's "just another wash" is a completely indefensible position unless you have that data. I think it is quite likely to be much better than a "wash".

As a Minnesotan, I don't want our beautiful woods choked by massive coal plants

Of course it would be better if there was no pollution anywhere, but that's a pipe dream. Isn't it much better to be able to choose where the pollution goes? And don't forget that less pollution is generated overall due to higher central efficiency and better central pollution control.

we will continue to need oil for both commercial travel and our military capacity

Of course we will continue to need vast quantities of oil for the forseeable future. But a large reduction in the amount of oil needed would be welcome, and more importantly the flexibility for large amounts of energy production to switch away from oil at a moment's notice would be great. It would reduce the impact of oil price fluctuations on the economy and increase the effectiveness of the saftey net provided by the strategic oil reserve.

Re:How does it come out?

[Mr_Matt]

Yeah, you don't need to show me the basics - I do cloud radiative forcing research for a living. And anyways, that Goody graph makes my point for me: the 15um CO2 band is saturated (as in, 100% absorption) at the surface and at 11km, while the dominant (in the longwave, anyways) 6.3um H2O band is *not* saturated at 11km (nor are the rotation bands.) Adding CO2 will generate a weak longwave radiative forcing due to pressure broadening, while adding H2O could push the column absorption closer to 100%, generating a much larger longwave radiative forcing.

There is a caveat - as the Goody plot shows, vapor is indeed saturated at the surface. Therefore, how one adds H2O to the atmosphere will determine the result. If additional H2O can be added in such a way that only surface amounts of vapor increase, then there will be, as you say, little effect in the infrared. Adding H2O to the middle troposphere, where the vapor lines are not saturated, will net you a vastly different result. Complicating the issue is the interaction between clouds and water vapor - we simply cannot tell where additional amounts of H2O vapor will go, and therefore, we cannot assume that additional water vapor will not yield a longwave forcing, since the H2O bands are not everywhere saturated. Whereas the CO2 bands are.

This is why most models investigating CO2 impacts start off with a doubling of CO2 - since the band is saturated, it takes a lot of additional CO2 to get a significant forcing.

I can send references, if you like - my gmail is in my profile.

Re:How does it come out?

[superflyguy]

2H202H2+02+energy When you get the hydrogen from the water, that requires more energy than making the hydrogen back into water. If you store hydrogen in water, split it, and put it back together, you have less usable energy than you started with. Otherwise, it would be perpetual motion. It must require less energy to get the hydrogen from storage than is obtained by combining the hydrogen with oxygen. Otherwise, the vehicle runs out of energy. The hydrogen must already be separated from the water, but free hydrogen is too combustable, so it must be bound to something. They bind it with something that they can be split apart with less energy than the fuel cell produces.

Re:How does it come out?

[njh]

That's all very nice, but your starting value is the total amount of rubbish produced. In my experience the plastic portion of the waste stream is quite small in comparison to that weight of glass, steel, compostable and aluminium components; which are better recycled directly rather than through an energy intensive process like TD. The plastics and non-compostable mass of my waste stream is about 5% of the total, bringing your estimate down to 200000 barrels per year - barely a sniff.

You claim that the energy to remove the water is insignificant. The amount of energy required to vapourise water is equivalent to heating the water to 600C, so it is exactly the same amount of energy as my original estimate (namely 2.5kJ/g). Unless TD can recover the majority of the thermal energy(which it can't in my understanding), this process is akin to direct thermal desalination of seawater in terms of total energy use, i.e. lots.

We know what the energy value of human waste is - it is burnt in some countries as a fuel. It is about 40% the calorific value of wood (about 8MJ/kg). I estimate I produce about 1kg of human waste per day, or about 2.2kWhr of energy per day. Assuming perfect conversion (the 8MJ/kg is dry value, incidently), I could just about run my computer all day off my personal waste output. I certainly couldn't drive to work.

The big problem people have with estimating energy returns on these kinds of energy sources is that they always want to use the big numbers by combining over a city. If you can't sustain yourself realistically with a given energy source, scaling it up doesn't help. (Did you hear about the shop that made a loss on every thing they sold? They made it up in volume). Yes, a 10MW plant is a nice thing, but if you can only make one of these per city you would be better off examining a different source.

Industrial waste is better recycled directly in most cases (more efficiently) than by converting it into oil. Stop believing everything of a technology that as yet has only demonstrated something akin to rendering glue. Yes, it will be a useful ally in the global reduction of energy, no, it will not be a useful part of the future energy mix.

Another way to look at it is that to produce each item of plastic, glass, food or steel requires about 10 times as much energy as the embodied energy of the item itself. It is quite clear that even a perfectly efficient extraction process is not sustainable.

Now, if we were talking about producing oils for use as feed stocks in a future world without fossil oil - I'd be the first person to promote TD. For energy, no go.

Re:How does it come out?

[dbrutus]

If you use Fischer-Tropsch methods, you go straight to diesel for about $1/gal. What's the point of methanol if it's using the same feedstock and is more expensive?

Re:How does it come out?

[dbrutus]

Actually lunar/orbital solar is an option but you've got to drop launch costs by a factor of 100 before we get there. If we ever get a space elevator up, that's exactly the effect it'll have on launch costs. You beam power down via microwaves and convert the resulting power to hydrogen as a useful middleware solution.

Re:How does it come out?

[jelle]

"At 19cm x 5 cm you would have to have one heck of a large car to hold them all."

19cm x 500cm, or maybe as 76 cm x 1.25 meter (approx 2.5 x 4 foot).

Lots of cars have that much roof space. Maybe even double that. Counting the hood, triple.

So, one mile eh? hmm. Saving, say, a gallon per month. Probably not enough to pay for 100 of those cells.

I hope there are better cells available somewhere that can increase that to 5-10 miles, that would be nice.

At least, covering the roof and hood with 300 of those cells in an AC system may get that to around 6 miles/day with cells available today. Getting interesting.

Re:How does it come out?

[jelle]

Hmm, scrap cells from here get 1.3 Watts out of 2x4 inch. That is approx approx half size for 11.7WattHour per day, so five times better power/area.

That means even with DC systems that would get 5-15 miles/day of free driving, depending on how much roof area you have, and if you want to cover your hood...

That's enough to cover my commute!

Re:How does it come out?

[jnik]

I can send references, if you like - my gmail is in my profile.

Actually, it's not shown publically--you can probably figure out my email from the URL; it's bog-standard. I'm definitely interested in references.

Re:How does it come out?

[Engie_Viral]

You make the assumption that the hydrogen is to be used in a fuel cell and not just combusted like petroleum (this would likely make the transition smoother because we can already do internal combustion - allowances would just have to be made for the fuel)

Re:How does it come out?

[specman]

Having the electric motor in the wheels would result in the motor being constantly impacted. Unless the motor is built to withstand being dropped from pretty highup and operating as it impacts, one needs to keep the motor inboard of the suspension system. Of course, the motor can be moved closer to the wheels which does cut down on spin loss, so there is a net gain, if you have somewhere to place the motor and mount it securely enough.

Re:How does it come out?

[sillybilly]

Graphite is fine as a noncorrodable electrode at low temperatures in almost any circumstance - even naked fluorine is made with graphite - though it definitely has higher electrode gas-overpotential than the noble metals, thus much lower conversion(of electrical to chemical energy) efficiency.

Re:How does it come out?

[AndersOSU]

No one is going to read this now, but according to the mose generous sources the payback on ethanol is 1.01 http://www.usda.gov/oce/oepnu/aer-814.pdf

Since this study is sponsored by the USDA, which is heavily infulenced by the ethanol lobby, I tend to believe the more conservative estimates of below 1.

Re:How does it come out?

[njh]

perhaps you didn't read the article, but reading the intro and the conclusion it states that the payback is 1.34 (if people exagerate a claim from a link they give I have to conclude that they have an agenda). Anyway, that is corn ethanol, which is widely regarded as very inefficient. This article from NZ's dept of agriculture
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=2&url=htt p%3A//www.eeca.govt.nz/uploadedDocuments/WSL%2520b ioethanol%2520report%2520FINAL0.pdf&ei=XbMoQ5GKJsb c4QGXpfCZBw
has corn at 1.24 (fairly close to the USDA figure), but puts lignocellulose ethanol at 5.3* return (and can use waste LC from paper pulp, food industries and paper kerbside recycling.

So I have to disagree (and yes, nobody will read this either :).

Re:How does it come out?

[AndersOSU]

Gahh my bad the USDA does indeed report 1.34. I was reading reports the night before my post, and was quoting from memory, without double checking the link. Bad form I know. While I don't think bio-ethanol is currently viable due to the fact that subsidies have to be provided in order for farmers to be persuaded to grow ethanol feed stock, I did not intentianally mis-quote the article. I apologize.

Anyway after re-reading the USDA report I have a few issues, firstly with energy credits. It is entirely possible that I am missing something here since I don't work in the field, but it seems to me that the energy credit is just a fudge factor, used to artificially inflate the NEV. I think I understand the premise of using one, that is that co-products of the refining process take energy to make, and do have value. I do not think that it makes sense to subtract their value from the energy figures since there is no way to make ethanol without producing them. Since the co-prodicts do not contribute energy back to the process I think they should be viewed as wasted energy. I don't think it is the case that these products would have to be made another way if not in EtOH production, often times they would just be replaced by a byproduct of another process that would be perfomed anyway, such as corn meal production. In this case the NEV drops to 1.08.

Secondly, and again I could be missing something here, EtOH additives to gasoline decrease fuel efficiency. I'm not certain if this is taken into accoun using the density, and the heating value of EtOH, but the efficiency decrease is significant, and should be accounted for.

Basically I will continue to think that EtOH gasoline additives are a bad idea until you can convince a farmer to grow corn for EtOH production without offering him subsidies.

Re:How does it come out?

[njh]

We all make mistakes (me more than most :).

So you are saying that you would rather have $5 than $5 and a slab of beer? The 'waste' of biofuel production is often worth as much as the fuel (just not as a liquid fuel for transportation). In most cases the remainder is useful as a fuel for electricity production or heat. In the future it may be possible to use this energy to provide the energy to produce the next crop, or simply to provide more energy. Discounting that simply because it isn't a goal product is misleading. It's like saying that gasoline has a higher energy value than ethanol, and neglecting the negatives such as the energy to run the refinery, the transportation costs, reliance on foreign oil and danger to the environment. To compare any fuels fairly we must include all the sides costs, and merging the total energy available seems a very valid claim to me.

As for corn farming for ethanol, I have never argued it is a good idea. Land that is suitable for corn is probably best used for that, and land that is not good enough for that can be used to grow a bio fuel such as wheat, sugarcase or hemp. I think arguing about corn ethanol is a strawman.

(And I think gasoline+otto is a stupid combination to begin with, so whether it is modified with ethanol is really moot)

Part of the problem is that we have had different exposure to biofuels and transport technologies. In Australia bioethanol and biodiesel are cost competitive with fossil oil, and when you can find an independant dealer, they often sell 80-20 ethanol considerably cheaper than regular unleaded. And diesel is a practical personal fuel here, as every petrol station has a diesel pump. (I should know, I share a DI ute with a friend)

Re:How does it come out?

[AndersOSU]

From my understanding most of the byproducts are things like lignins, glycerol, and vegetable oil, none of which are particularly valuable, especially from an energy standpoint. Lignins are created already in large quantities by the paper and timber industries, and while they have found some creative ways of selling this waste product, its not really suitable for energy production. The other products might be saleable as well, but that doesn't mean they contribute to the energy balance.

That being said I do think there are legitimate reasons to issue energy credits to the process, I just think the tendency is to apply them too liberally. If a by-product can and does directly supply energy then I'm all for giving it an energy credit, (e.g. oil -> biodiesel) if not I don't think its legit. I feel the same should be true of a petrolium refinery, products that are not suitable for energy should be viewed as waste, and not somehow positively factored into the plants's efficicy.

The reason I talk about corn ethanol is that it is far and away the largest source of bioethanol. If wheat and cane are shown to contribute significant amounts of ethanol then I'll consider them. However, corn is the most prevelent for a reason, it is likely the easiest crop to convert to ethanol. I would expect wheat especially to produce a much lower net energy value.

Personally I'm with you, and think the best solution to our energy issues is small turbo diesel engines running on biodiesel. While biodiesel has its own issues I think it's a much more scalable solution.

In the US at least bioethanol is just a reason to throw money at farmers under the guise that it is eco-friendly - but then again there are worse things we could be spending that money on.

Re:How does it come out?

[njh]

Agreed.

Power

[b00tleg]

If you crash into another car, do you get to steal the car's pellet and absorb its power?

Re:Power

[tdemark]

Actually, if you crash hard enough, you will form Helium pellets.

Re:Power

[Ihlosi]

.. but only if you use friggin' laser beams.

Re:Power

[DanAndDusty]

Hmm.. Should get plenty of warning then.. If I see a car with an aquarium on top with a couple of sharks swimming around I should ensure that I am outside of ramming distance. Nice to have an early warning system.

Re:Power

[The Wooden Badger]

If you crash into another car, do you get to steal the car's pellet and absorb its power?

Only if you chop off its head.

Re:Power

[Anonymous Coward]

If you crash into another car, do you get to steal the car's pellet and absorb its power?

And if your car is painted yellow, when it runs over a pellet, it causes all red, pink, light blue, and orange colored cars to turn blue for a few seconds. Meanwhile your car can total these cars.

It's better than quad damage.

Re:Power

[notnAP]

Actually, if you crash hard enough, you will form Helium pellets.
... and a very small pile of carbon dust.

Re:Power

[ebonkyre]

> Actually, if you crash hard enough, you will form Helium pellets.

So that's how we get flying cars!

Re:Power

[/dev/trash]

But teh car is still somehow immortal!

but..

[Anonymous Coward]

does it run lin..*gets shot by the sense police*

Hold on, more info in the summary than the article

[TripMaster Monkey]

There seems to be information in the summary that is not substantiated in the referenced article:

While bound in this medium no hydrogen loss occurs, enabling hydrogen to be stored cheaply for indefinite periods.

The article referenced mentions nothing regarding hydrogen loss (or lack therof).

When needed, the extraction of hydrogen is relatively simple.

Is it? Again, nothing in the article about the extraction process.

So where did the submitter get this extra data? If this data is correct, we'd appreciate a link.

If, however, this detail in the summary is unsubstantiated, we'd appreciate less speculation in the future.

Airships

[mrogers]

The new pellets could also bring about a renaissance for giant hydrogen-filled airships, or as they will now be known, beanbags.

Re:Airships

[Anonymous Coward]

well, obviously, it wouldn't since the density of the pellets is much larger than that of the gas form...

Re:Airships

[ikkonoishi]

The solidified hydrogen is heavier than air so it would be useless for airships.

Re:Airships

[CyricZ]

Do you believe that the Bang Bus videos are planned and scripted? Or do you think that they actually involve random women who nearly spontaneously participate in sexual relations with a bunch of men in a van, all while being videotaped?

Re:Airships

[hesiod]

OK: one person didn't get a joke
bad: two people within 15 minutes didn't realize it was a joke.

Re:Airships

[kyle90]

They could just stuff them full of copies of this article - if that's not light enough, I don't know what would be.

Re:Airships

[Minwee]

Does it matter?

Re:Airships

[HermanAB]

These vehicles will be very popular with beancounters...

Re:Airships

[ikkonoishi]

I realised it was a joke.

It just wasn't a very good one.

Will be good for solar homes if....

[Martix]

will be good for solar homes if it can be reused and is easy to fill and use...didnt see how it releases H2 from it when stored or how...went to the link but very intresting to say the least if its as good as they claim

Tragically...

[Waffle Iron]

... they decided to coat these pellets with a mixture of iron oxide and aluminum powder.

Re:Tragically...

[jimand]

Modded funny? This sounds like flamebait to me.

Re:Tragically...

[hotdiggitydawg]

Fe2O3 + Al2 ---> Fe2 + Al2O3 (Thermite - highly exothermic). Don't tell me we've finally found someone who hasn't read the anarchist's cookbook (or sat through high school chemistry)?

Re:Tragically...

[stienman]

Add an "Energy Supplement!" label, and you're all set to sell at GNC.

-Adam

Re:Tragically...

[imsabbel]

Use black iron oxide to get higher temperatures (i.e. Fe3O4)

Re:Tragically...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tell me we've finally found someone who hasn't read the anarchist's cookbook (or sat through high school chemistry)?

I've done both of course, but I still missed the joke. Any memory of those classes and readings have long since faded into the abyss. I guess some people are superhuman in their ability to recall things. But having recently taken courses in college, from my own experience, working my ass off on the material making sure I know it inside and out, I'll still forget by the time finals come around. I'm both envious of other's apparently vastly superior memory capabilities, as well as amused by the holier-than-thou sort of pompous attitude that assumes perfect recollection some 20+ years after the fact. You probably either work in a field which requires chemistry knowledge or are one of the rare humans that has good recall. As for me, I may as well have never been to those classes, because it's not a matter of needing a refresher to jog my memory, those bits are gone, burned out. Maybe I have brain damage...

And we shall call these pellets...

[utexaspunk]

COAL!

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[Smidge204]

Sorry, but coal is (relatively) pure carbon.

Maybe sugar? People are always trying to put sugar in my gas tank anyway...
=Smidge=

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[utexaspunk]

okay, you're right... mmm! yummy! so if my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere can I eat the fuel?

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[TripMaster Monkey]

Sorry, but sugar is (relatively) pure carbon.

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[Alex P Keaton in da]

And on a related note- Sugar in your gas tank won't hurt your motor- It will just clog your fuel filter and your car won't run due to a clogged fuel filter. And even if it gets past the filter and into the motor, it won't hurt the motor.
Wait- is this offtopic? Can anything be offtopic when the posted article is so bad that there is nothing to reply to, except to point out its shortcomings?

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or more like "sticks of butter" (since they're hydrogenated vegetable oil and other fats, which are just long chains of carbon with lots of hydrogen stuck to it)

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[Smidge204]

Cane sugar C6H12O6 - Only 40% carbon by weight. Lignite, the poorest quality coal, starts at 40% carbon and the highest quality (anthracite) coal is up around 90% carbon. That's "realtively pure" in my opinion!

=Smidge=

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[MindStalker]

C6H12O6 (most sugar)

mostly hydrogen actually.

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[caronc]

I think it's pretty obvious: ENERGON

Careful though when you fill up on it, those damn Autobots might show up and blow everything up!!

But try again.. and they will blow it up again!

Wash, rince, repeat and make it a TV series!

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[Anonymous Coward]

A single carbon atom is more than 12 times the mass of a single Hydrogen atom. So by mass, theres actually six times as much carbon per molecule as hydrogen.

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[ozmanjusri]

Sorry, but sugar is (relatively) pure carbon.

Well, this lump I have here seems to have 12 carbon atoms, 22 hydrogen atoms and 11 oxygen atoms. Maybe you've microwaved yours a little too long

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[gnalre]

or water

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[MindStalker]

yes by weight then its mostly oxygen.. either way parent is incorrent.

(weight of oxygen is 16 carbon is 12)

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[nganju]

You call 45 atoms a lump of sugar? Try sweetening your coffee with that.

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[kniLnamiJ-neB]

...for a grand total of 45 atoms? I think you should research the concept of a "lump".

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[cached]

In case you don't get where the numbers came from, a monosaccharide molecule of sugar (the simplest form) is made of 6 Carbon atoms, 12 Hydrogen atoms, and 6 oxygen atoms (C6H12O6). When combining two, one water molecule (H2O) is lost (in a process called dehydration synthesis), leaving you with C12H22O11, which IIRC is sucrose.

You really do need to look up the definition of a lump, but most likely the dictionary will be too astronomical a size for you.

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[Hektor_Troy]

That's the easy part. The hard part is finding a small enough cup ...

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, so make it a very (very, very, very) small lump...

Re:And we shall call these pellets...

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

That's about all the gov't will allow you to use with the Food Pyramid.

Awesome...

[SeekerDarksteel]

I am now just one bright yellow car that runs on these things from being Pac-Man!

Other measurements

[varmittang]

Thats about 60 Miles to the gallon of hydrogen, if my calculations are correct. Now, what is the price of hydrogen, per gallon or liter?

Re:Other measurements

[garcia]

Now, what is the price of hydrogen, per gallon or liter?

Will it matter as oil prices continue to rise? If they raised nearly a dollar in ~45 days what's going to happen in 10 years (if we even make it that far with China's recent upturn in heavy usage)?

Re:Other measurements

[Bluey]

I got 23 miles to the US gallon.

500 km is about 310 miles.
50 liters is about 13 US gallons.

This is comparable to many US sedans. The question is whether the cost of hydrogen processing will be more or less expensive than the cost of refining oil.

Re:Other measurements

[Non Dufus]

It's about 23 mi/gal. Of course I used the conversion factor 20oz=591mL right off my Mountain Dew bottle.

Re:Other measurements

[scovetta]

I would question how much energy is required to pelletize the hydrogen? Hopefully not more energy than can be reasonably extracted from the hydrogen after the fact.

That's the problem with some of these emerging technologies-- you can have a car that runs on happy feelings, but if those feelings have to be produced in a factory and cost $500 per gallon, then you might as well use gasoline instead.

I'm sorry, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. It's a slow week.

Re:Other measurements

[apt142]

I don't know. Probably expensive at first. But as the technology matures it could get very cheap indeed. Unlike fossil fuels Hydrogen is of course very abundant and won't suffer the supply and demand problems that oil is right now.

It could also be produced nearly anywhere a water supply is. So, shortages and pipeline restrictions would be a thing of the past. As would foreign dependance on energy.

Re:Other measurements

[SatanicPuppy]

Hmmmm...500 k = 312.5 miles. 50 liters = 13.5 gallons. 312.5/13.5 = 23.14mpg

23 miles per gallon is better than an suv, but it doesn't come close to a hybrid. And it's sure as hell not 60 mpg. Hell it's only 37km per gallon. Where the hell did you get that number?

And apparently moderators are on crack, as usual. Come on guys, if you drive a car EVER that number should look suspicious.

Re:Other measurements

[Shawn Parr]

Intriguing math you use sir!

Hm, lets see here, 500km/50L equals 10km/1L according to earth math.

And according to Google that equates to 23.5-ish mpg.

What I am really unsure of is wether I should be more amused that you were so far off in the first place, or that the mods put you at +5 Interesting at the time I viewed.

Re:Other measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

Using gallons to compare this to gasoline in terms of price or effeciency is pointless. Gasses are compressible, liquids are not.

By the year 2050 people will be complaining how when they were a kid hydrogen used to only be 15 credits per mol.

Re:Other measurements

[PhilipPeake]

Well, not only that, but can reasonably sized engines produce the power required. Hydrogen doesn't have anything like the energy density of petroleum fuels, so internal combustion engines may not work too well. The only other current alternative would be to use fuel-cell technology and drive electric motors - which have a poor power/weight ratio. This may be ok for cars for commuters, but for traveling any distance these cars would be somewhat unpleasant to drive.

Re:Other measurements

[TheRaven64]

Hydrogen is abundant, but so is carbon. There is carbon in the air all around you! Unfortunately, the abundance of carbon in the form of CO2 don't translate to it being easy to manufacture coal. In the same way, the existence of lots of hydrogen in the form of H2O doesn't make it easy to manufacture hydrogen gas. In both cases, you need to put energy in. Now, if you have a nice large fussion power plant, then this is cheap. Otherwise you are still producing most of your energy burning fossil fuels.

Re:Other measurements

[spencerogden]

Nice thought, unfortunately not true. Hydrogen in the form needed is not abundant. Seperating it from water takes a significant amount of energy. Where are you going to get that energy? I don't believe numbers have shown that producing hydrogen is more efficient than gasoline. Maybe producing it is efficient enough that it benefits of no polution during use are worth it, maybe not. At least if this article is true then it might make a good energy delivery system.

However, its not the silver bullet you describe.

Re:Other measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it matter as oil prices continue to rise? If they raised nearly a dollar in ~45 days what's going to happen in 10 years.

The trend won't continue. Stop arguing on a slippery slope to make sensationalist comments.

Re:Other measurements

[ghukov]

I agree with you. If we can get a safe alternative fuel from hydrogen, we wont have to worry about "peak oil"(or "peak hydrogen", for that matter, what with the oceans), plus it could create a parallel fuel market (eventually). I was watching the news last night, they had a segment on the profit american oil companies are turning due to the recent hike in oil prices. I believe the figure was to the tune of $32B this quarter. They were showing signs at gas stations across the nation, I saw one that said $4.99 for regular. Unbelievable. I am dreading my heating bill this winter. We have got to take the control out of the hands of these greedy opportunistic corporations. They were encouraging people to not buy gas on sundays on the news. I have to wonder what the impact on the climate would be if we all started using hydrogen fuels, with the main byproduct being water vapor. Could this create more rain and/or humidity?

Re:Other measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

23 mpg.... That is what my minivan gets. I liked the article on the hybrid that got closer to 200 mpg. Now that is impressive. Unless hydrogen pellets cost closer to 5cents per gallon and makes my future minivan sound like a Harley.

On an unrelated note, does that mean that my exhaust would be de-hydrogenized pellets?

And, would I have to worry about Pacman following me and eating these pellets?.... Pacman scares me.

Re:Other measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason oil prices can ever go above $50/barrel is a reasonable chance that, within a few years, they will drop below $30/barrel.

Coal, tar sands, oil shale, and methane hydrates can be extracted and converted to petroleum products in a $30-$50/barrel equivalent price band. The problem is that they all require capital-intensive processes, and if oil prices drop, the investments in the processes will bring huge losses.

If oil prices "continue to rise", then those processes will be brought on-line, and the production of hydrocarbons from those sources will utterly dwarf the supply of petroleum-derived hydrocarbons.

Oil is in a bubble. It will crash, just as surely as the dotcom bubble crashed. The problem for speculators, of course, is guessing when that will happen. But crude cannot sell above $50 a barrel for long; it's too easily replaced at that price.

Re:Other measurements

[varmittang]

Sorry, my math was off. way off. I had the wrong numbers in my head. Mod it up stupid, not interesting.

Re:Other measurements

[LWATCDR]

I do not get this whole thing. A gallon of liquid hydrogen has less energy than a gallon of gas. it will weigh a lot less but has less total energy.
So can these pellets store more hydrogen in a given volume than hydrogen in it's liquid state.
And yes the cost hydrogen will be more expensive than the cost of refining oil. You can only get Hydrogen by cracking Natural Gas or buy using a LOT more energy that you get from hydrogen to split water. And before some idiot says that Moore's law will fix that in the future... The Law of Thermodynamics says that is the way it will always be.

Re:Other measurements

[Ihlosi]

I have to wonder what the impact on the climate would be if we all started using hydrogen fuels, with the main byproduct being water vapor.

One of the two main waste products of burning gasoline is ... water vapor. And compared to the other waste product, it is pretty much a non-issue.

Re:Other measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats about 60 Miles to the gallon of hydrogen, if my calculations are correct.

They weren't, as others pointed out. However, miles/gallon is fairly irrelevant - the main point was that with a reasonably sized tank a vehicle can have a (currently typical) 300 mi. range.

Now, what is the price of hydrogen, per gallon or liter?

This point is also not (very) relevant, since for this to succeed there must be economies of scale which currently don't exist. The real question is, how cheaply can we produce vast quantities of hydrogen if (say) 10% of U.S. transportation is initially going to use it?

I say, bring on LOTS of pebble bed nuclear reactors...not only for hydrogen conversion, but for water purification. They are also environmentally friendly, creating zero green house gasses. The U.S. could be energy self-sufficient or near to it in short order (and completely fulfill the goals of the Kyoto protocol) if this approach were used with determination.

Re:Other measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

1. This is supposed to be amazing. Why should I be surprised if the numbers are amazing.

2. My sister had a Chevy Sprint that easily got >60mpg on the highway.

This post should not be construed as an excuse not to check numbers when people give them to you.

Re:Other measurements

[msmikkol]

That 10 liters per 100 km (23.5 MPG) is gasoline talk. US DOE wants to store hydrogen into a 50 liter (13.2 gal) tank and be able to drive 500 km (310.7 mi). What makes that challenging is the low density of hydrogen, only about 89 g/m3 (0.089 oz/ft3). High pressure tanks are either very heavy or very expensive, and chemical storage solutions always include reforming equipment or other processing steps to get hydrogen out.

Therefore, we should look at the energy content of the hydrogen stored into that 50 liter tank. With what Amminex claims, they can reach an energy content of 486 MJ (461 kBTU), versus 2150 MJ (2.0 MBTU) of 50 liters of gasoline. 486 MJ equals to 11.3 liters (3.0 gal) of gasoline equivalent. That makes 2.3 liters per 100 km (104.1 MPG!)

How is that possible? Fuel cells, electrical engines and braking energy harvesting. Fuel cells are electrochemical energy conversion devices that are free from the Carnot engine efficiency limitations, and furthermore, their efficiency increases on partial load. Operating a heat engine on partial load is detrimental to efficiency.

Re:Other measurements

[Pharmboy]

Everyone knows that since gas has risen $1 in the last 45 days, it will continue to do so at exactly the same pace forever, so gas will be $83 per gallon within 10 years.

Obviously,there are no other factors that should be considered.

Re:Other measurements

[hesiod]

> If they raised nearly a dollar in ~45 days what's going to happen in 10 years

The oil companies will buy the rest of the world. Oil prices raised a dollar because oil companies refuse to stop gouging. If they started making a reasonable return instead of the ass raping they give now, gasoline would be at a more reasonable price.

Re:Other measurements

[zippthorne]

Jeez, I thought you people were google fans...
The Google calc for the conversion.

Re:Other measurements

[hesiod]

You are nitpicking the wrong thing... A gallon of Gas and a "gallon" of hydrogen pellets (I'm an American, where gallon is for liquid measurements) are completely incomparable, as they are used in totally different ways, not to mention that they will have very different costs for a gallon of each.

Re:Other measurements

[biraneto2]

This question will become irrelevant in the future, since there will be no more oil.

Re:Other measurements

[zippthorne]

Unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen is a byproduct of a significantly higher throughput operation: natural gas extraction. It can be cheaply obtained by cracking petroleum as well.

If we have to start talking about things like electrolysis, it's not going to be nearly as cheap as it is currently and will suffer from the supply problems, "pipeline restrictions" and other such things from significantly higher electrical output. (which better be nuclear* if you want to get off fossil fuels. *or maybe solar if you've got a lot of land)

ELECTROLYSIS ISN'T FREE. You must put in at least as much energy as electricity as you want to get out from the hydrogen you get. In fact, much much more since the reaction isn't particularly efficient and resistive losses will also be high.

In other words: The cheap ways of obtaining hydrogen that depend on the production of oil just like now. If hydrogen becomes the dominant energy transport scheme, the price of hydrogen will go up, not down.

Re:Other measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

They are simply raising prices to reduce demand to match what they can supply.

Re:Other measurements

[Smidge204]

Plants are pretty good at fixing carbon into forms usable as fuel; Wood, oil, sugars, etc. Depending on the type of plant and where you grow it, you needn't spend much energy to produce the "fuel".

=Smidge=

Re:Other measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

23 miles to the US gallon. [...] comparable to many US sedans. The question is whether the cost of hydrogen processing will be more or less expensive than the cost of refining oil.

I would think the real question is whether it can be made much more cheaply than biodiesel. I get about double this mileage in my diesel car, and we have a few years' experience in building diesels already, and we have a huge infrastructure for distributing liquid fuels like biodiesel.

When I look at biodiesel, I see experience, backwards-compatibility, and an upgrade path. When I look at hydrogen pellets, I see Yet Another Futuristic Car I'll Never Be Able to Buy (the GM EV1 of the 21st century?).

Re:Other measurements

[SatanicPuppy]

Reason 1: All cars have gas tanks that are big enough to take them 400 miles. It's a requirement. This one doesn't.

Reason 2: 50L and 500km is 1L per 10km...this is obviously low. If you've ever put gas in your car a ratio of 1 unit of volume to 6 units of distance should leap out at you.

Reason 3: 60mpg is a round number.

Need I go on? Jeez just do the basic math.

Re:Other measurements

[SatanicPuppy]

Yea, 1 kilo of hydrogen is comperable to a gallon of gas, in terms of energy.

I was just pointing out the most obvious and glaring error. It's going to take people some time to wrap their minds around gas as GAS rather than gas as LIQUID.

Re:Other measurements

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

And yes the cost hydrogen will be more expensive than the cost of refining oil. You can only get Hydrogen by cracking Natural Gas or buy using a LOT more energy that you get from hydrogen to split water. And before some idiot says that Moore's law will fix that in the future... The Law of Thermodynamics says that is the way it will always be.

We live on a giant ball of molten metals with a thin crust of solidified rock on top. This ball is orbiting an even larger ball of incredibly hot gasses and plasma. We get most of our energy by burning little bits of burnable material scattered about the surface of our ball.

...and you have the gall to say "The Law of Thermodynamics" (I hope you meant laws) will insure that creating hydrogen will always be more expensive than refining oil. Some people use science to find answers. Some people cite "science" as an authority to support their opinions. The first group are called "scientists." The second group is called "irrational." Guess which group you are in. Just a tip, whenever you hear someone use the phrase "the way it will always be" you can be pretty sure they aren't a competent scientist.

Re:Other measurements

[mrchaotica]

And yes the cost hydrogen will be more expensive than the cost of refining oil. You can only get Hydrogen by cracking Natural Gas or buy using a LOT more energy that you get from hydrogen to split water. And before some idiot says that Moore's law will fix that in the future... The Law of Thermodynamics says that is the way it will always be.

Heh, I'll be that idiot! Moore's law could fix that in the future, not by changing the law of thermodynamics, but by making photovoltaic cells so cheap that we can afford to make enough to compensate for 10% efficiency (or whatever).

I doubt that it's likely to happen, though -- I think fusion or solar-convection is probably a better bet for cheap energy.

Re:Other measurements

[srussell]

Thats about 60 Miles to the gallon of hydrogen, if my calculations are correct.

How did you do your calculations? I get:

• 500 km / 50 liter ~= 23.5 miles / gallon

Would you mind elaborating?

--- SER

Re:Other measurements

[speculatrix]

Re:Other measurements (Score:4, Insightful)
I would question how much energy is required to pelletize the hydrogen? Hopefully not more energy than can be reasonably extracted from the hydrogen after the fact.

Obviously not THAT insightful, nor RTFA'd... amminex say the storage of H2 is reversible, i.e. once you've created the pellets, they will store & release H2 repeatedly.

No information on the number of cycles possible, or how resilient they are in a tough environment like a vehicle.

Re:Other measurements

[hesiod]

Wait till they try to figure out how that gas becomes a solid pellet!

Re:Other measurements

[mrchaotica]

...and then we come full circle, back to biodiesel.

Re:Other measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

We still have to refine the oil. The energy still has to come from somewhere. Hydrogen is just a storage medium. Why does nobody get this!?!

Re:Other measurements

[apt142]

I'm not discounting that it wouldn't take energy to separate the two. I was mostly discounting the additional costs and pitfalls that come with oil consumption.

I think the energy problem could be addressed with technology and infrastructure.

Re:Other measurements

[bofkentucky]

Quit buying oil and they quit "gouging", but keep in mind you need to swear off plastics and synthetic clothing as well. Break out the all metal and natual rubber bike or prepare to toughen up your feet.

Re:Other measurements

[leonardluen]

the western US is believed to have the largest oil reserves in the world, and guess what, no one is currently using them!

the only problem is that the oil is trapped in oil shale which is very expensive to refine. however if the price of oil keeps going up, that won't be a problem anymore. i believe i saw an article trecently that some company just made a breakthrough that would potentially make processing oil shale economical at current oil prices even. however i can't seem to find that article right now.

Re:Other measurements

[leonardluen]

here you go, i just found that article

Re:Other measurements

[ArthurDent]

Let me see if I've got this right. What you're saying is that even if it took the same amount of energy to extract the necessary hydrogen from oil as it does to make gas, we'd need one quarter to one third the amount of oil that we do now to produce the same travel.

That's good but not revolutionary. Is there more room for improvement in this technology?

Re:Other measurements

[LWATCDR]

You got me.. I failed too write what I meant.
I meant that It would always cost more energy to split water into hydrogen and Oxygen than you will get from it. My fault I should have made it more clear. It is possible that hydrogen will cost less than gasoline if the cost of oil gets high enough and that the cost of an another energy source is cheap enough. I should have made it clear that I was talking about the cost of energy and not in dollars. I am just sick of people that are claiming that hydrogen is an energy source and not a storage method.

I was not being irrational just what I wrote was. My bad.

Re:Other measurements

[jkrausyao]

The price of oil and gasoline is determined by supply and demand and not cost and profit. If the price of gasoline was reduced below this balance then consumption would increase and result in shortages. The excess of price over cost is resulting in increased profits which can then be used to increase supply. Supply could be increased by building a new refinery. Now would also be a good time to increase gas taxes as this would not increase the price.

Re:Other measurements

[spike2131]

Oil prices went up because it was the only way that the demand for oil could be brought down to a level equal to the limited supply.

Its not gouging, its ordinary market forces. If oil companies didn't raise their prices, they would soon find themselves with no oil left to sell. And you would find yourself sitting in a half-mile long backup at the pump, hoping to get your ration of price-controlled gasoline.

Re:Other measurements

[hesiod]

I thought "ordinary market forces" were based off of "Supply & Demand?" When supply is artificially limited* or demand forcibly lowered (as in the case of modifying price to do so), does that not break down? Obviously, I'm no economist, so I am probably looking at it too simplistically...

* I don't mean to say there is no actual in-ground limit, but intentional limitations on production

Re:Other measurements

[jgc7]

The question is whether the cost of hydrogen processing will be more or less expensive than the cost of refining oil.

Not Exactly
I think the correct question is: How much will it cost to drive one mile using hydrogen? or what price for a barrel of oil will equalize the price?

Re:Other measurements

[b1t r0t]

Um, no.

Oil prices went up because oil futures are currently in the midst of a speculation bubble. Eventually the bubble will burst. Grab some popcorn and watch the prices fall back significantly a few months from now.

Re:Other measurements

[Scarblac]

No, that's exactly what always happens. All the limitations are mostly artificial - given enough money, we'd be able to jack up production by a lot within a year.

If the prices are high, there's incentive to increase production. If the prices are low, not much will be produced. You can draw a curve price supply - the higher the price, the higher the supply.

Same for demand. If gas was free, you'd find a use for it and would buy more. If it was $1000 a gallon, you'd try not to use as much. There's another curve. The higher the price, the lower the supply.

The actual market price is at the spot where both curves cross, the spot where supply equals demand, both in price and in volume.

Now what happens in case of someone like Katrina, is that one of the curves changed (if the curves never changed, you'd always have the same price and volume). Less can be produced, so in total, at a given price point, suppliers will be able to supply less. So that curve shifts.

As a result, price goes up, to a point where suppliers make a little more oil, and users use a little less oil, so there's equality again.

Re:Other measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

To convert miles/US gallon to litres/100km you do,

    300 / (miles/US gallon)

so 23 miles per gallon is about 13l/100km. Not very efficient if you ask me, but better than Hummer's 10mpg or 30l/100km!!

Re:Other measurements

[WhiplashII]

The primary reason the law of thermodynamics is not a limitting factor is technology. Current (production) heat engine designs do not get anywhere near carnot efficiencies, and are not even in the same universe as the best efficiency possible. Hydrogen, for example, burns at about 4000 C. Using a perfect heat engine, you could get a little over 90% of the energy out as useful work - except that at 4000 C your heat engine is a vapor. There are fuel cells that approach this level of efficiency. Most rocket engines are in this range of efficiency. But there are technological problems with each - but these problems will be solved!

Really, thermodynamics is not the problem - technology can go much futher than we are now.

Re:Other measurements

[smithmc]

  Hydrogen doesn't have anything like the energy density of petroleum fuels, so internal combustion engines may not work too well.

I dunno, BMW doesn't seem to think so...

Re:Other measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you smoking? Can I have some?

Re:Other measurements

[Jesus_666]

$500 per gallon? Most factory-produced happy feelings are much more expensive!

Re:Other measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

Which liquors do _you_ drink to get those prices?

Re:Other measurements

[Alsee]

Everyone knows that since gas has risen $1 in the last 45 days, it will continue to do so at exactly the same pace forever, so gas will be $83 per gallon within 10 years.

Muahahaha! You fool! You did a linear calculation! Prices don't change linearly, they change exponentially! Gas prices have gone up 50% in the last 45 days. If they continue to go up at the same rate for the next ten years then one gallon of gas will cost...

five hundred and eighty eight Trillion dollars!

Muahahaha! I have 20 gallons of gas hidden away in my basement. I'm going to be RICH! Muahahaha! Muahahaha! Muahahahahahaha!

-

Re:Other measurements

[msmikkol]

What I was trying to say was that with the same energy stored in the fuel, a fuel cell electric vehicle travels maybe two-three times farther due to superior efficiency.

The efficiency of Otto (gasoline) engines is between 20 and 30 per cent at maximum power, and drops to ~10% on partial load. If you take a look at the average drive cycle, you can see that a vehicle engine is seldom operated at full power.

On the other hand, a hydrogen fuel cell system can reach an overall efficiency of 50 %, without any losses at partial load. Actually, the efficiency of a fuel cell improves when you move down from the maximum power point.

The downside of hydrogen fueled vehicles all derive from the properties of hydrogen. Low density makes efficient storage difficult, and hydrogen is more expensive to produce than gasoline. The cheapest way is to reform natural gas, but that method produces carbon dioxide emissions. Environmentally thinking, the cleanest method is electrolysis of water, but that consumes a lot of electricity, and that electricity should come from renewable sources. There are also other ways to produce hydrogen, but they are in their infancy.

Using a liquid fuel would solve the storage problem easily, but at the moment direct methanol/ethanol fuel cells are not ready for commercialization. Reforming methanol on-board was considered for some time, but building a small, reliable and cheap reformed has turned out to be very difficult.

Re:Other measurements

[LordWill]

There may be more economical solutions than hydrogen. However, hydrogen appeals to me because anyone with water, electricity and some other equipment can get hydrogen. Only people with oil already under their ground can get oil. If a large opportunity appears for hydrogen makers, they will find more economical ways to bring it to market.

Proprietary technology.

[reality-bytes]

So they've patented it? - Well, fair-play to them; this is actually an invention.

It would be nice if they license the tech cheaply but if not, there is another solution.

There is another material which can store hydrogen completely safely at room temperature (unless you are drowning in it).

Re:Proprietary technology.

[TripMaster Monkey]

The energy density of these pellets is 13 Mj/l (compared to gasoline's 34.6 Mj/l).

Tell me: what is the energy density of water?

Re:Proprietary technology.

[Smidge204]

Tell me: what is the energy density of water?

Depends on its temperature and pressure. :)
=Smidge=

Re:Proprietary technology.

[HateBreeder]

2.09593 Mj/l

Re:Proprietary technology.

[Anonymous Cowpat]

missing one minor problem... unless you're fusing it (in which case you've more dangerous things to worry about than a tank of hydrogen, things like a million-degree plasma to keep stable) you're gonna have to put as much energy in at point of use as you're going to get out of it, so you'll actually be running on whatever other power source you're using.
Of course, if you simply want to move hydrogen from one place to another water is very stable, but a large percentage of the mass that you're transporting is actually 'useless' oxygen, 4/5 of it, infact, there's only 200kg of hydrogen in each metric tonne (ish)

Re:Proprietary technology.

[FluffyWithTeeth]

Mmmmm, Palladium... For given values of safe ;)

Re:Proprietary technology.

[Anonymous Coward]

Using water as the "fuel" for a hydrogen fuel cell is impossible - the by product of a hydrogen fuel cell is water, so conservation of energy simply means that you must expend at least the total output energy of the fuel cell just to recover the hydrogen from the water. Since no device will ever be 100% efficient, all the fuel cell will become is a very expensive and not very powerful heater.

Re:Proprietary technology.

[Chris Burke]

1 L = 1kg of water, right? So I'd say about c^2 J/L.

How much of that you can extract depends entirely on your process. I recommend anti-matter reaction. :)

Finally

[Neeth]

This might well be a breakthrough that will shape the future, in a positive way I mean... Now make it power my laptop and all is well.

Residue?

[grantedparole]

I looked at the website and it looks interesting. I am a not a chemist, so I am was surprised to see that much hydrogen released from one gram.

My question about the process since H2 is held inside something that looks like a pill would be are there any residues resulting from the chemical conversion?

Re:Residue?

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory, one gram of pure hydrogen will occupy 24 liters at room temperature and pressure. Since hydrogen only becomes solid at virtually absolute zero, this is not a feasible method for storage, hence we "store" it by combining it in the form of another molecule, which is a solid or liquid at room temperature. Note that this is not hydrogen "trapped" in another substance, it actually is in the other substance. Methanol is a common example - there are 6 hydrogen atoms in every molecule of methanol, and reforming is relatively simple to perform, which "releases" the hydrogen and leaves carbon monoxide. To answer the question more directly, yes, there will be residues or byproducts (although they may be gasses which dissipate easily) since the pill will not be pure hydrogen.

Using Hydrogen to power your car

[ReformedExCon]

The article (advertisement) is pretty short and doesn't explain the technology in much detail. I wonder how much a "full tank" of hydrogen pellets would cost. And would the extra weight of the pellets be significantly detrimental to the car's performance?

When you go to the pump, do you swap pellets with the gas station attendant? How flammable are these things?

What if I swallow one? Is it non-toxic?

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[koniosis]

What if I swallow one? Is it non-toxic?

I dont think that's an issue, what happens if your drink petrol or car oil or battery acid... don't expect it to be safe to eat (if is is, that's a bonus, but not really going to save anyones life...)

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[ledow]

What if I swallow one? Is it non-toxic?

So you're the git that means airline peanuts have to have warnings such as "May contain nuts". Not everything is fit for human consumption, so take that bottle of bleach out of your mouth.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[Kevin DeGraaf]

What if I swallow one? Is it non-toxic?

Make 'em as toxic as possible and let natural selection do its thing. It'll clean up the gene pool for the rest of us.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[ReformedExCon]

If a dog laps up some spilled gasoline at a service station, he will get very sick.

If a child eats a dropped pellet (it looks like a Smarties tablet) at a service station, it would be nice that she didn't die.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[Wassini]

How flammable are these things?

Not at all flameable: picture

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[Perl-Pusher]

Less than half of the energy by volume is available from hydrogen than from gasoline. From the article, the energy density by volume is 13.0 MJ/liter where as according to The Physics Factbook gasoline has a density of 8.6 kwh/liter. Using this online converter 13 MJ = 3.61 kilowatt hours.

By comparison the post office runs several propane powered vehicles around the city here. These poor performing vehicles run on a fuel with an energy density of 7.5 kwh/liter.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[ifwm]

"If a dog laps up some spilled gasoline at a service station, he will get very sick.

If a child eats a dropped pellet (it looks like a Smarties tablet) at a service station, it would be nice that she didn't die"

If a dog laps up anti-freeze, it will die.

The point you fail to address is that there are massively toxic chemicals in the environment that are far more of a present danger.

It would be really nice if we could talk about new tech without someone bringing up irrelevant considerations.

And no, I don't consider making something less toxic so parents con be more irresponsible a good use of time or effort.

Get bleach banned, then pesticides, and then we'll talk about how toxic this stuff is.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[ifwm]

"By comparison the post office runs several propane powered vehicles around the city here. These poor performing vehicles run on a fuel with an energy density of 7.5 kwh/liter"

Great, but how much carbon do they release into the atmosphere?

See, energy density isn't the only consideration.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[koniosis]

What about rat-killer and other suck "small" sweet-esq poisonous products. If you're really concerned you can lobby to make the things taste horrid so children will spit them out.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[strider44]

A tip for later (if you're a *nux user that is...):

strider@strider:~$ units
2084 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units

You have: 13MJ
You want: kilowatt hours
        * 3.6111111
        / 0.27692308

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[Anonymous Coward]

What if I swallow one? Is it non-toxic?

Well, you'd belch a lot, but it would be harmless as long as you don't light a match.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[ghukov]

I would hope they would preconceive this sort of issue, and distribute the fuel in canisters of some sort with the necessary extraction method already integrated. That way you could deactivate the old one, pull it out, slap in the new one, activate it and go. Of course, there would be no "topping off", but thats why you carry an extra canister. Maybe some kind of reservoir that the canister fills that would be able to store enough hydrogen to keep the car running, or if you ran 2 or 3 in parallel, and stagger replacement so that they never run out at the same time. Or maybe even a beowulf cluster of hydrogen cylinders!

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[hesiod]

> If a child eats a dropped pellet at a service station

If a child sees dog crap in the middle of the woods and thinks it looks like a candy bar... his parents obviously had no intention of having a smart kid.

There are a ton of things in the world to be concerned about. If your kids are picking random things up off the ground and eating them, you are too concerned about the wrong things and SHOULD be concerned with making your child more intelligent.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[Anonymous Coward]

Less than comes from the backside of all the animals on the planet.

I'm still waiting for the Envio-Nazi's to show me a *single* credible scientific report that proves that a) global warming exists and b) is caused by Humans.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[Soul-Burn666]

Or this converter. :)

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[Shotgun]

And just how much performance does the mailman need when they're stopping every 50ft or so?

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[caseih]

Great, but how much carbon do they release into the atmosphere?

See, energy density isn't the only consideration.

Actually as it currently stands, propane (or even gasoline) vehicles release a lot less carbon into the atmosphere than hydrogen cars. In fact, given that hydrogen can only be created by electrolyzing water or stripping it from heavier hydrocarbons such as natural gas (which releases lots of CO2), I'd estimate that propane or gasoline would release many times less carbon than any hydrogen vehicle currently.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[schon]

It would be really nice if we could talk about new tech without someone bringing up irrelevant considerations.

Bingo. I'm just waiting for someone to bring up the inevitable "what if there's an accident and the pellets get ruptured - there's the possibility of an explosion", while completely ignoring the fact that gasoline vapours are just as (perhaps even more) dangerous.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[cheesybagel]

You do not need for the fuel to have the same exact energy density as gasoline. Because fuel cells have basically double the efficiency of an internal combustion engine, that could as well be good enough.

What I find extremelly suspicious is the lack of mention of the gravimetric energy density figure. Many of the hydrides have good volumetric energy density, but then weigh like a ton of bricks.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[Anonymous Coward]

And we're still waiting for you to change your definition of "credible" to something more reasonable than "it says what I always knew."

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[ricosalomar]

Hell yes! And I'm waiting for some physi-nazi to show me a *single* credible scientific report that proves that a)gravity exists and b)any other well documented, peer-reviewed scientific concensus has merit.

You're a moron.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[klang]

What if I swallow a bottle full of gasoline? Is it non-toxic?

Don't put stuff that goes in your car in you mouth! Grow up! ..but, eventually, somebody will eat one of theese, and sue the living shit out of some producer, for being a moron.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[toddestan]

You're joking, right?

Electrolysis of water releases no CO2, just hydrogen and oxygen gases. The source of electricity may release CO2 if it's coal/oil/natural gas. But if it's hydro, solar, wind, tidal, or fission then it will release no CO2. The thing about storing energy with hydrogen is that it makes solar and wind energy more useful, as you don't need a constant supply of electricity - you can just generate the hydrogen when you can and use your stockpiles when you can't (hence the need for easy storage, which these pellets may provide).

Natural gas is mostly methane, which is CH4 (plus things like propane). Seperating methane, you'll get 2 hydrogen and 1 carbon left over. I don't know if this carbon is released as CO2 in the process or not. But I suspect that even if it is, it'll mean less CO2 than burning propane, aka C3H8 (3 CO2 released per molecule burned) or gasoline which is an even longer hydrocarbon.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[caseih]

Sure, but let's be realistic here. Our electricity comes primarily almost exclusively from coal. Hydro and nuclear power are pretty minor in comparison (not saying that this is right). By the time you factor in the losses of converting the energy from coal to the final hydrogen product, you've burned a lot of coal to be equivalent to the same energy in propane or gasoline. If you compare that on equal terms, I think the gasoline releases less carbon. But either way you look at it, carbon is released, and it all comes from fossil fuels.

Since natural gas is CH4, you will definitely have carbon left over after producing H2 gas and it definitely comes off as C02.

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if we were interested in density then I would vote for dark matter :)

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[Stephen Ma]

The picture shows a pellet inside the flame of a cigarette lighter. Being a cynical fellow, I have to ask: is there any hydrogen inside the pellet?

Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess by 'our' you mean the USA. Some countries rely less on coal for electricity generation. I think France is about 35-40% nuclear, for example. And the country I come from has a majority of its power from Hydro.

Are they chewable?

[DaFork]

I won't be buying any of their power pellets if they taste terrible.

Re:Are they chewable?

[markov_chain]

I wouldn't eat those if I were you. They could give you gas.

*rimshot*

Re:Are they chewable?

[zippthorne]

How often do you really find yourself being chased by ghosts that would make power pellets useful?

Re:Are they chewable?

[Net_Wakker]

wouldn't that be methane? immediately obsoleting all environmental benefits from using hydrogen.
hm... a car running on farting cows, now that would be a sight...

Re:Are they chewable?

[archeopterix]

I wouldn't eat those if I were you. They could give you gas.

Slashdot 2010: "Slashdotter dies after trying to light a hydrogen-bean-induced fart"

Re:Are they chewable?

[Anonymous Coward]

... Thank You very much...


He'll be here all week! Try the veal, and tip your waitresses on the way out....

Re:Are they chewable?

[nastro]

I believe there's a Simpsons quote that's apt for the question, considering this is hydrogen we're talking about, here.

  Bart: How are they, Ralph? Good?
Ralph: They taste like.. burning!

Double entendre!

Extraction?

[D3]

Sadly not much detail on the extraction process. Good ol' water can store a lot of hydrogen cheaply but getting it out is a PITA. Still, it'd be nice to pull up to a station and just drop a pellet (or bag of pellets) into the car and drive off again. D

Re:Extraction?

[Criffer]

Good ol' water can store a lot of hydrogen cheaply but getting it out is a PITA

Sure, water can "store" hydrogen. But that's not the point.

Conversion of hydrogen+oxygen->water is exothermic. That's the reaction you need to power the vehicle. Stored energy in, kinetic energy out. It's the energy stored in less-stable molecules (H2) vs. that stored in more stable molecules (H2O) that is useful, in that the creation of a more stable molecule releases energy (as heat).

The reverse reaction is, you guessed it, endothermic. It takes the same amount of energy (more, due to inefficiencies) to convert water->hydrogen+oxygen as it releases when you then consume it. And just where do you get that energy?

The highly endothermic reaction has to be done at the power plant, using some external power source (e.g. nuclear, solar etc.), which is what gives you the potential energy in a transportable form. You then release that energy elsewhere (e.g. the streets of Monaco).

Re:Extraction?

[SmittyTheBold]

Well, that's because water is one of the lowest-energy states of hydrogen. Most of the methods to actually USE hydrogen involve the creation of water as an end-product.

Of course, when somebody invents sone insane system that is powered by its own waste product...

interesting

[rayde]

i see huge potential in a fuel source that could be stored in this manner. Imagine a world where you could just buy a box of fuel pellets at the grocery store, since it's safe enough to keep in the aisles. My guess i that this could potentially do away with "gas stations" as we know it, leaving them to scrounge around for the few remaining gasoline-powered cars, and becoming more and more relegated to doing service and maintenance.

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure you would really want to carry out of your food market something the volume or weight of a tank of gas. You'd need more pellets than gas too, since they have lower energy density. It's convenient having fuel loading stations along roads and where you don't have to handle the fuel.

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it would be so fantastic buying 200 lbs of pellets at the supermarket...

Re:interesting

[grimJester]

Imagine a world where you could just buy a box of fuel pellets at the grocery store, since it's safe enough to keep in the aisles.

This is what has been holding most alternative fuels back. This stuff needs no new investments for the distributor. Unlike huge gas tanks no one wants to invest in before there are cars that run on gas, while no one buys said cars because there is no way to fill the tank.

Re:interesting

[Snaller]

You'll probably see that... if you live 40 years.

Re:interesting

[cazbar]

Gas stations actually don't make much money on gas. Most of their profits come from the fact that they are convienence stores. The gas part does help bring in customers, but I don't think they would take a huge hit from not serving gas anymore. People on the road still will buy the overpriced supplies and low quality food.

Businesses that can adapt will last.

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

i see huge potential in a fuel source that could be stored in this manner. Imagine a world where you could just buy a box of fuel pellets at the grocery store, since it's safe enough to keep in the aisles.

We have that fuel source today, and many of us are running our cars on it. It's called biodiesel, and it's about as dangerous as vegetable oil, which you can, of course, buy at any grocery store.

(Some people even run straight vegetable oil, but due to its viscosity you need a second tank and a heater for that.)

Biodiesel is less toxic than table salt, and breaks down faster than sugar. It has a higher flash point than even petroleum diesel -- it's considered a non-flammable material, and a lit match dropped in a bucket of it will simply go out.

If their figures are correct, it's also about twice as efficient as these hydrogen pellets. My car (biodiesel) can go over 1000 km on a 55 liter tank; having to refill on a new fuel source with no infrastructure, and only every 500 km, seems like a tougher sell than a plug-in electric car. ("Hello, triple-A? I'm stuck in Iowa. Can you FedEx some hydrogen to me?")

I, too, think that biodiesel has huge potential. I'm not sure exactly what benefits hydrogen pellets have, yet.

Re:interesting

[eth1]

Grocery store? Nah... since eventually EVERYONE would need these, why not simply have have X amount delivered to your house once a week, and the empties removed? We could reclaim a hell of a lot of street corners.

Re:interesting

[Jerry]

The problem with the grocery or convenience store scenerio is that of waste. They would have to swap out the "gas tank" for a new one so that the waste by-products could be recycled. In fact, to minimize environmental damage it should be federally mandated that purchasing a "gas tank" is illegal without the old tank.

Re:interesting

[poot_rootbeer]

Imagine a world where you could just buy a box of fuel pellets at the grocery store, since it's safe enough to keep in the aisles.

Imagine that you'll need fifty pounds of such pellets to top off the fuel storage system in your car.

Now does it make more sense to store these pellets on the shelf inside the store, or in a tank underneath a pump station out in front of the store?

Re:interesting

[joshv]

Yes, this sounds interesting. Let's replace a central point of fuel distribution that allows me to drive my car up to with a few feet of the fuel source and load up 50+ lbs of fuel, with, what - supermarket aisles? No way I am lugging 50lbs bags of fuel pellets back to the parking lot.

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, considering that it's a pellet and the name of the company is "Amminex", strongly implying ammonia, I think we've already got that system in place.

Buy some kitty litter at the grocery store, have your cat pee on it, then shovel it into the car.

What about the economics?

[CyricZ]

The main thing to consider is the economics. More to the point, how will the existing oil/energy companies financially benefit from such technology? For if they don't have an interest in this product, it will never come to fruition, regardless of its technical merit.

Re:What about the economics?

[HateBreeder]

Unless a government acts responsibly enough and develops the product for the good of humanity...

Though you'd need pretty serious lobbying to get past the corrupt officials.

Re:What about the economics?

[CyricZ]

Exactly. The governments of many nations (particularly the US) are quite intertwined with the energy industries. You won't find a government of any significant size willing to promote such technology due to such business relationships between politicians and energy interests.

Re:What about the economics?

[Red Flayer]

"For if [existing oil/energy companies] don't have an interest in this product, it will never come to fruition, regardless of its technical merit."

Well, these pellets are a form of hydrogen storage. It's not a source of an energy, but a way to transport it and store it without loss (according to the article/spec sheet/press release).

In effect, it allows a standard distribution method (and combustion method) for energy derived from any source.

There's no reason why petrol couldn't still be used as a source of the energy -- only the distribution would be different.

Re:What about the economics?

[ScentCone]

The main thing to consider is the economics. More to the point, how will the existing oil/energy companies financially benefit from such technology? For if they don't have an interest in this product, it will never come to fruition, regardless of its technical merit.

Yes, yes. Sort of like VOIP will never happen because the old-school phone companies won't like it. Or DVD players are just a fad, because theater owners don't like them. Etc.

I'm always astounded by the imaginary power that people assign to particular industries, even as we watch the market tap-dance right around them, to the tune of that old favorite, demand.

Energy companies distribute energy in ways that are useful to the people who are willing to pay for it. If there is anything like a useful price point for technology such as this (though I think it will require a huge number of nuclear power plants to provide enough juice to pull that much hydrogen out of enough water to replace oil, per se), then companies will be there to provide that service. Whether its BP, or Exxon, or whether it's Uncle Jimmy's Hydrogen Shoppes, it'll happen. If there's fundamentally no way to make the math work, then it won't work.

Otherwise, saying that the (currently, mostly) oil companies are going to use their secret cabal super powers to stop this sort of thing is like saying that Detroit and Big Oil aren't going to let hybrid cars find a way to the market (a commonly enough heard argument, which plainly turns out to be nonsense).

Re:What about the economics?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is in Exxon's best interest to purchase the company. Exxon made $24 Billion in profits last year. Not revenues, but profits. There is no way they would let this product come to market. They would be better off buying the company and burying the technology. I believe they are one of the largest holders of Solar Technology patents.

Re:What about the economics?

[ScentCone]

You won't find a government of any significant size willing to promote such technology due to such business relationships between politicians and energy interests.

I guess you don't consider the US government to be of "significant size?"

At least spend one minute using Google before you make such ridiculous comments.

Read.

Re:What about the economics?

[duffbeer703]

Energy companies will just convert over to the new energy products as they come out -- they aren't dumb like the airlines or railroad companies. Oil companies realize that they are selling energy, not petroleum.

The big oil companies like ExxonMobil are actually divesting themselves of gas stations and gas delivery in many markets, which are the the only parts of their business that stand to lose from a fuel conversion.

Re:What about the economics?

[Anonymous Coward]

The main thing to consider is the economics.

Yes, yes, of course. Economics. Because our planet doesn't matter at all.

Re:What about the economics?

[hesiod]

> Though you'd need pretty serious lobbying to get past the corrupt officials.

Which requires serious lobbyists, who are a part of the corruption (generally, I'm sure there are some who are not total scumbags).

Re:What about the economics?

[CommieLib]

Actually, they made $29.6 billion in profits. Of course, that constitutes only a 10% profit margin.

For all of everybody's bitching about oil companies, here are some net profit rates for a couple of oil companies:

Exxon-Mobil: 10% net profit

Chevron: 8% net profit

BP: 5% net profit

Of course, as a consumer, I'd prefer that they make zero profit and lower the price, but these rates of profit don't seem outrageous to me.

Re:What about the economics?

[Snaller]

No, probably not in the US - but it will in other parts of the world, and so they fall more behind...

Re:What about the economics?

[OakDragon]

Right, just like 'Big Horse & Buggy' shut down those oil guys back in the early 1900's...

I agree with some of the child posts - oil companies are really energy companies, one would hope.

Re:What about the economics?

[KarmaMB84]

I'd like to know how much that is in real dollars considering the price they are supposedly paying has gone up up up recently and their profit in real dollars would also go up up up if they actively maintained their profit margins by increasing the price downstream has to pay for their shit.

Re:What about the economics?

[glesga_kiss]

You miss the point. The industries do control their respective markets, they have spent a lot of energy on getting things to this state. The only one I can think of where a newcomer has "tap danced around them" is the music industry, however if you have been following the game they are still very much in the running and are linked to all the legal services. Sure, the illegal p2p trade goes on, but that is not relevant to this argument.

NO company is going to change the planets fuel formats without the approval of the existing industries. That's just the way it is and it's down to one word: infrastructure. They have it, you don't. Imagine trying to replace DVD with a new format that wasn't available in the same shops. You wouldn't stand a chance. Likewise on fuel.

Re:What about the economics?

[Lord Raze]

What a blinkered opinion. Ever heard of the free market?

The main thing to consider is the economics.

True.

More to the point, how will the existing oil/energy companies financially benefit from such technology?

Who cares if existing oil companies benefit? If they don't, alternative energy startups will.

For if they don't have an interest in this product, it will never come to fruition, regardless of its technical merit.

Nonsense.

If there is demand, you can bet your ass that someone, somewhere will try and supply it.

Other companies will be founded and they will sell it to us instead. If the green energy market continues to grow explosively as petroleum prices continue to rise, Big Oil will have to adapt or die.

The market abhors a vacuum.

I find your knee-jerk surrender to the multinationals Disturbing.

Re:What about the economics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, but how much of their "cost" is taken up with internal billing issues, where (for example when I worked for *large energy and foods conglomerate*) internet access cost $100 per user per month due to the use of "internal resources".

these "costs" are really very fictional and take up a HUGE portion of a company's budget.

Its the same creative accounting that allowed holywood to tell Stan Lee that Spiderman (the movie) didnt turn a profit so they did not owe him anything.

Re:What about the economics?

[vertinox]

For if they don't have an interest in this product, it will never come to fruition, regardless of its technical merit.

Oil companies are accutley aware that oil is a time limited cash cow.

Yes they are milking it, but they are also accutley aware that if they let oil run out before there is an alternative then all their billions of cash will only be a good stove warmer after the world's economies collapse making money worthless when people can't afford to bring them luxuries or even food to market.

Re:What about the economics?

[odin53]

governments of many nations (particularly the US) are quite intertwined with the energy industries

Interesting that you say "particularly the US" when there are so many countries that either own energy companies or have a significant or controlling stake, and you seem to be aware of this. Just in Western Europe, there's British Petroleum, Elf Aquitaine (France), TOTAL (France), ENI (Italy), Petro Canada, Repsol (Spain) and Statoil (Norway). Then look at all the Latin American and Eastern European countries that do the same. The U.S. doesn't have a state-owned energy company, so no matter what, it is not as "intertwined" as other countries (though I certainly agree with you that there is intertwining).

Re:What about the economics?

[tsotha]

If you delve a little deeper into those reports you'll find the money they make on selling oil is lost in the noise. For the most part, oil companies make money building infrastructure. The actual price/barrel doesn't affect the profit margin much, but high prices will make them money because there's more pressure for capacity growth.

As you say, these kinds of profits aren't outrageous. Consider film producers have averaged 30% over the last couple of decades.

Re:What about the economics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Money talks. The way oil prices are going, these pellets charged using solar panels and wind mills will be the cheap energy source.

You should be an editor

[MondoMor]

You do a much better job actually RTFAing (RingTFA?) they they, and, well, you actually read Slashdot as well.

And you can obviously mash a button on the screen, so you're more than qualified.

Rob, hire this guy and others like him to make your site a non-joke.

Re:You should be an editor

[tgd]

If he was really up to that task, he would have posted his reply twice.

Slashdot doesn't need editors that don't take that initiative!

Re:You should be an editor

[tgd]

If he was really up to that task, he would have posted his reply twice.

Slashdot doesn't need editors that don't take that initiative!

.

Re:You should be an editor

[BarryNorton]

If this site is so bad, why are u here reading and posting comments??

Maybe because watching a train crash is good entertainment on a lazy unproductive afternoon... that's my excuse!

Re:You should be an editor

[rco3]

He would have posted his reply twice, with slightly different phrasing, if he was really up to that task.

Slashdot needs editors that take that initiative!

Re:You should be an editor

[imnojezus]

+10 Karma for one comment. I nominate tgd for president of the world.

Re:You should be an editor

[Soul-Burn666]

+10 Karma for one comment. I nominate tgd for president of the world.

Re:You should be an editor

[databyss]

I... I.... I am speechless!

That was absolutely amazing!

Re:You should be an editor

[goldspider]

Watch out for the Karma Police.

Re:You should be an editor

[Anonymous Coward]

He was only given 'funny' and 'overrated' mods... Net loss in karma?

I Wonder

[.tardo.]

If I feed this to my dog, will he fart lightning?

Re:I Wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Criteria of 2015 ...

[Ihlosi]

The pellets exceed all criteria set by the US Department of Energy for 2015, enabling a car to drive more than 500 km on a 50 L tank (13 MJ/l)

... and here I thought a car that needs more than 10l/100km qualifies as a gas guzzler by the criteria for 2005. Guess I was wrong.

However, any way to solve the storage issues associated with hydrogen should be welcomed. I'd want a fuel-cell powered car rather sooner than later.

Re:Criteria of 2015 ...

[Stephan Schulz]

... and here I thought a car that needs more than 10l/100km qualifies as a gas guzzler by the criteria for 2005. Guess I was wrong.

Yes, a vehicle that needs more than 10l gasoline per 100km is a gas guzzler (by European standards, at least). Doing this on hydrogen is something very different. If this works (and I'm sceptical), it is good enough to make hydrogen viable as an energy carrier for transportation.

Re:Criteria of 2015 ...

[Dachannien]

That's a misread statistic, considering we're talking about hydrogen fuel cells here and not gasoline.

Re:Criteria of 2015 ...

[amorsen]

The trick is that the 10l tank doesn't actually contain 10l of hydrogen. By weight, only 9% of the tank is hydrogen.

I still consider methane the best storage medium for hydrogen. Of course, that won't eliminate emissions of carbon dioxide completely.

Amazing

[gauntlet420]

Provided that this isn't merely pre-IPO hype, and that the technology is actually feasible, one can only hope that the automotive industry is taking keen notice of this.

There are arguements that the energy density of fossil fuel cannot ever be supplanted by hydrogen, and that replacing gasoline will be a long, challenging problem to solve. This is still an exciting idea, though.

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Most breakthrough technologies are unimpressive compared to what they eventually replace, but they start the game at the bottom of the technology "curve" so they have plenty of room to improve. (Common example: new data storage technologies often don't store more than the previous ones, but they make up for it by being smaller/cheaper/more efficient)
Also, you wouldn't have to surpass the energy density of fossil fuels if you could translate more of the energy into work. IIRC, current car engines waste almost 60% of the energy in gas creating heat.

Re:Amazing

[DrZorachus]

Most breakthrough technologies are unimpressive compared to what they eventually replace, but they start the game at the bottom of the technology "curve" so they have plenty of room to improve. (Common example: new data storage technologies often don't store more than the previous ones, but they make up for it by being smaller/cheaper/more efficient) Also, you wouldn't have to surpass the energy density of fossil fuels if you could translate more of the energy into work. IIRC, current car engines waste almost 60% of the energy in gas creating heat.

Dubious?

[Xhris]

The link looks like it is just a way of someone trying to advertise their new product. Anyone else think they are just trying to raise money...?

Re:Dubious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the quality of the website, definitely. Check out the page names...

Re:Dubious?

[andymar]

Looks legit to me. The story has been reported in the danish media today. 5 scientists from DTU (the danish technical university) have patented the hydrogen pills. They will talk about the find at a conference today in Chicago.

interesting, but not new

[jburgess]

This has been done several years ago by United Nuclear (http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/). For a while they had a sports car of some kind running with this kind of system. Now they're testing to begin selling home hydrogen generation systems, and car conversion kits. They're in the final stages of fleet testing their systems now.

Could these be...

[Cliffy03]

Energon cubes?

Re:Could these be...

[ikkonoishi]

Nah they are shaped more like donuts.

Mmm... donuts... *drool*

TripMaster Monkey for editor!

[CyricZ]

I agree. TripMaster Monkey should be an editor here. He's got the knowledge and intelligence to post fantastic articles. He can efficiently get us the info we need to know. To let his talent go to waste would be a terrible thing.

Re:TripMaster Monkey for editor!

[Dareth]

I liked him better when I misread his name as RipMaster Monkey... sounded more ... well better.

Pellets!?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Now all we need is science to invent a 4 wheeled giant hamster that seats 4. If she goes 0-60 in 2, even cooler.

We can park them hamster wheels and sell back the energy to the city!

Ah the list of stupid ideas is endless.

Re:Pellets!?

[BaudKarma]

And if we can figure out a way to have these hamsters produce hydrogen pellets, instead of regular 'ol poop pellets... well sir, it'd be like a license to print money!

Re:Pellets!?

[hesiod]

> And if we can figure out a way to have these hamsters produce hydrogen pellets

Assuming it doesn't cost more to feed them than the market value of what they produce....

In OTher Words

[CleverNickedName]

enabling a car to drive more than 500 km on a 50 L tank

Or to put it more clearly: 13.75 km on a 1.375 L tank.

Re:In OTher Words

[ikkonoishi]

Even more clearly it is

11,854.8151 furlongs per hogshead.

Re:In OTher Words

[DigitalRaptor]

Or to put it more clearly:

10 km/L

Well, wait until Wednesday's report

[Red Flayer]

""A group of scientists are going to present their breakthrough in hydrogen storage this Wednesday."

Seeing as neither the article nor the summary give any specifics, why is a press release being passed along as an article?

Why not wait until they've presented their findings, and then submit an article with more information?

Whoever submitted this article is probably interested enough in the subject to search for a better article come Thursday or Friday -- and if it gets on /. again, I, for one, will not cry "Dupe".

Re:Well, wait until Wednesday's report

[greg_barton]

Why not wait until they've presented their findings, and then submit an article with more information?

Why? Because we've just had a natural disaster which caused a huge oil shock, that's why. The markets (i.e. the irrational people that operate them) need a message that there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

Re:Well, wait until Wednesday's report

[Nyh]

This press release of the Danish Univeristy may shed some light on the material:
http://www.dtu.dk/English/About_DTU/News.aspx?guid =%7BE6FF7D39-1EDD-41A4-BC9A-20455C2CF1A7%7D

Nyh

Re:Well, wait until Wednesday's report

[Isca]

Mod parent up!!!! Finally, not a lot of info, but better than the submission.

Re:Well, wait until Wednesday's report

[Red Flayer]

"The markets (i.e. the irrational people that operate them) need a message that there's a light at the end of the tunnel."

Hmmm. Since this is your answer to why the /. article was accepted, you just implied that the article was posted because

(1) Slashdotters control the markets.
(2) Slashdotters are irrational.

As far as number two is concerned, I'm not so sure you're incorrect. As far as number one, I wish it were so.

Re:Well, wait until Wednesday's report

[greg_barton]

Since this is your answer to why the /. article was accepted...

Don't be so Slashdottocentric. :)

No, it's my speculation as to to why it published at all, with little detail. It's just the "there's a solution to the hydrogen problem" meme, thrown out just when there's a need for hope, when it will be most easily consumed.

You might think I'm yelling "conspiracy!" I ain't.

Re:Well, wait until Wednesday's report

[Red Flayer]

Yes, but your response was to my posting, which had nothing to do at all with the public at large, only Slashdot.

And my last post was a poor attempt at humor...

Sorry, forgot the tag.

exciting

[dhbiker]

to say the article is thin on info is a bit of an understatement :-D

Its still pretty exciting though, I mean concievably you could have a pellet manufacturing machine underneath your garage or something (the hydrogen stored in a sealed container before it makes it into pellet form). You'd have a solar panel on your roof and you pump out pellets 24/7 when weather permits, you then use the pellets to power your car/toaster/computer (anything with a pellet drive in it)

maybe I'm getting a little ahead of the technology here but I for one am looking forward to the day when it doesn't cost a small fortune to fill my car ;-)

Re:exciting

[16K Ram Pack]

From your domain I have assumed your location.

If you want to deal with the price of your driving, the solution is political, not scientific. Is it 75 or 80% of fuel cost which is duty?

Trust me, if someone can make hydrogen that costs 1p/litre from the refinery, you'll still end up paying 70p/litre at the pump.

Re:exciting

[dhbiker]

sad, but probably true.

They hide behind the fact that petrol is bad for the environment and high taxes put people off using so much, when we all know that really they just want the money.

Re:exciting

[16K Ram Pack]

Well, yes. Although if you didn't pay for all the NHS bureaucracy and overpriced (and then binned) computer systems through petrol, they'd only put it on income tax/VAT whatever.

It's a cute guilt/patrician trick, though. "We're taxing you to save the planet" (ignoring the fact that CO2 is not a local problem, and therefore, pointless being taxed except as an international issue).

What's the catch?

[swelke]

I don't get it. Are they made out of solid platinum? No, the article says the materials are inexpensive. Does it take 400 hours to handcraft each one? Do they crumble to dust in the presence of gravity? Do you have to hold a seance to get the hydrogen back? Ooh, I know: each 20-gram pellet is made from the concentrated brains of twelve dead whales. Come on folks, there has to be something that makes these things completely impractical. All we have to do is figure out what it is.

Re:What's the catch?

[Rude Turnip]

Orphans...well, parts of them anyway. Are you happy now?

Re:What's the catch?

[MSBob]

Well, it requires a hydrogen car to be useful. And those can't be built without huge amounts of platinum. That's the reason why honda FCX costs over $1 million without any chance of dropping in price until a cheaper catalytic material is found.

Re:What's the catch?

[hesiod]

> Come on folks, there has to be something that makes these things completely impractical

Well, it doesn't render them totally useless, but it takes energy to store energy. Since the beginning energy can't also be hydrogen, it's probably powered by burning coal (ergo, still causes pollution indirectly).

This, of course, would not be the same issue if they were energized via nuclear power. Then, there's the radiocative waste... Solar, wind, or something (or geothermal: I suppose the pellet factories could all be located on the coasts), but for every type of energy production, there's a million people who will scream that it's horrible for some reason.

Re:What's the catch?

[RoboRay]

Or until we maneuver a nickel-iron Near Earth Asteroid into Earth-orbit and mine the metals, bringing the price of platinum down to a couple of dollars a pound.

Re:What's the catch?

[toddestan]

Or until we maneuver a nickel-iron Near Earth Asteroid into Earth-orbit and mine the metals, bringing the price of platinum down to a couple of dollars a pound.

And then we can just transmute the nickel and iron into platinum and we'll be set! Or am I missing something here?

Re:What's the catch?

[RoboRay]

You're missing that a typical nickel-iron asteroid (based on meteorite samples) contains about 15 parts per million platinum, in concentrations at least 10 times better than the best terrestrial ore. Maybe I should have spelled that out. Sorry, I thought we were all geeks here.

But anyway, a relatively small 1km diameter nickel-iron asteroid would mass about 2 billion tons, of which 200 million tons would be iron, 30 million tons nickel, 1.5 million tons cobalt and 7,500 tons of platinum-group metals. At current prices, that's 150 BILLION dollars for the platinum alone. NEAs are also relatively accessible from the Earth, with much lower delta-V requirements than trips to the main belt asteroids. Would anyone like to invest in my start-up asteroid mining company?

Of course, dropping all that platinum on the world market would probably depress the price considerably, probably enough to make the above-mentioned cars very affordable once we get into serious use of all those vast resources floating around up there over our heads.

Re:What's the catch?

[toddestan]

Okay, that was pretty imformative. I thought that the typical asteroid out there is made more or less of the same stuff that the Earth is made out of, so they wouldn't really be any more platinum rich than our own planet. Or is all that platinum hiding down in the core or something?

Re:What's the catch?

[RoboRay]

You nailed it. The Earth is made of the same stuff, it's just that the heavier (and generally more desirable) portions mostly settled down into the core during the formation of the planet. On AVERAGE, the Earth is extremely rich in iron and those other metals (in similar proportions to a typical asteroid), but almost all of it is inaccessible to us. Our current technological civilization is essentially built on the poor scraps that were left over from forming the Earth's core.

But with a little ingenuity, perseverance and funding, we can do much better. Shifting NEAs into Highly Elliptical Earth Orbit is very feasible using Nuclear Thermal Rocket engines that were developed and (very!) successfuly ground-tested back in the '60s. Mining these asteroids not only would provide human civilization with an essentially limitless source of raw materials without needing to rip up any more of the Earth's surface, but would also eliminate the same asteroids that are most likely to impact the Earth sometime in the future. That sounds like a hell of a good deal to me.

Re:What's the catch?

[benjamindees]

If by "considerably" you mean "half", then yeah that's probably right. But, remember, platinum is $500 an ounce. There isn't enough platinum on earth to build enough fuel cells for even all the cars in the US.

A more realistic scenario is that a suitable alternative will be found, the price of platinum will crash, and your $150 billion asteroid will be more like $15 billion. Now, would you rather invest in spaceships or in materials research?

Re:What's the catch?

[RoboRay]

"There isn't enough platinum on earth..." Yes, I know. You are aware that asteroids are not on the Earth's surface, right? :p

I wouldn't say that finding a suitable alternative to platinum is more realistic. We know for a fact that far more metals than we will ever need (and not just platinum) are readily available to us in space. We don't know that a new material will be found that offers the same (or better) properties that we need for this one application (although I'll agree that it is likely). Something that's known as a fact to be possible is definitely "a more realistic scenario" than hypothetical research for something that may or may not exist.

And note that I didn't say that one small asteroid would be worth $150B. I said the tiny fraction of it that's platinum-group metals would be worth $150B at current prices and then stated that the price would drop considerably with the amount available from serious mining of asteroids. That inevitable drastic drop in price is kind of the whole point of my posts on this subject, since I was pointing out a way to make the above-mentioned car affordable.

The vast majority of the materials mined from "my" asteroid would be another hundred billion dollars or two of iron, nickel, the strategic metal cobalt, etc. Ripping up the Earth's surface, recycling, and yes, even materials science doesn't do anything to diminish the worth of those resources available in such vast quantities.

Everyone out of the elevator now!

[NotFamous]

There could be some interesting side effects if you swallowed one...

I need information

[TomorrowPlusX]

The linked article gives very little information. So, while I'm super stoked by this ( it's a really, really important development ) my questions are:

1) How do they get the hydrogen back out? Do they crush the pellets ( destroying them ), do they heat them, etc.

2) Are the pellets re-usable? Or do you have to get new ones? And if they *aren't* re-usable, can the carrier material be re-cycled into new pellets?

My concerns would be that if the material isn't re-usable/re-cyclable we'd end up with vast landfills full of crushed or otherwise useless carrier material, in which case this is hardly a boon.

On the other hand, if it's recyclable, I can see the oil companies being very happy with this, since you could go to a hydrogen station and dump your used pellets and "refill" with a dump of charged pellets. The station would send the used pellets to a recharging or recycling facility. I say "oil companies" because they've already got quite an infrastucture, and would probably be willing to make the investment into such facilities, since it would maintain their quasi-monopoly on automotive energy distribution.

Still, the appeal of safe hydrogen storage is great.

Re:I need information

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.dtu.dk/Nyheder/Pressemeddelelser/DTU-fo rskere%20opfinder%20brintpille.aspx
This site is in Danish, and i cant find a babelfish translator with danish support. But it does show the
director om Amminex trying to ignite a pellet with a lighter. The article also metions that the pellets are re-useable, and the hydrogen is released using a catalyst.

Re:I need information

[wall0159]

I agree.

The safe, long-term storage of energy is one of the biggest difficulties in using inconsistant energy sources (wind, solar, etc). If it becomes possible to hack this to produce something like a hydrogen battery (even if it involves the combustion of these pellets) that'd be revolutionary.

Imagine having solar panels on your roof connected to the hydro-pellet-synth (TM), which spits out pellets, some of which you stick in your car, and some of which you save for a rainy day ;-)

(sorry - couldn't help that one)

Re:I need information

[MindTwister82]

From the danish article:

1) They drop the pellets in a catalyst of sorts

and

2) The pellets are re-usable

The pellets are actually ordinary salt which stores amonia (sp?)

Re:I need information

[Anonymous Coward]

It is very simple to get Hydrogen back out of the pellet. You simply heat it with another fuel source. Gasoline or diesel fuel work well.

No. ICE CUBES

[MondoMor]

Meets all the criteria.

all wet

[tjic]

I too have come up with a scheme to

* bind hydrogen
* that is completely safe at room temperature
* has no loss of hydrogen
* thus enabling cheap storage
* allows for simple extraction of hydrogen

I use a proprietary process involving oxygen. I'm not at liberty to give more details until the patent is issued.

Re:all wet

[ntsucks]

"* that is completely safe at room temperature"

Unless your city is below sea level

Re:all wet

[strider44]

* allows for simple extraction of hydrogen

I'm sure many scientists will want to see your method of simple extraction of hydrogen, a major barrier for hydrogen fuel systems.

Re:all wet

[Des Herriott]

He said simple. He never mentioned efficient or economic.

Re:all wet

[Binestar]

I think since you invented this process you really should talk to New Orleans about the industrial spill of your product.

Re:Hold on, more info in the summary than the arti

[newnam]

I saw an article earlier that talked about hydrogen pellets but they were using them to recharge laptop batteries. It could be similar technology but this article talks about how it works. http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/2005/0508 28.Varma.fuelcells.html

Re:Hold on, more info in the summary than the arti

[alyflex]

direct link to the original source, it is however in danish. http://www.dtu.dk/Nyheder/Pressemeddelelser/DTU-fo rskere%20opfinder%20brintpille.aspx however there aint many details there eighter but i think those will come soon, they have after all made this pill around 6 months ago and kept it secret since.

Not very efficient

[kilodelta]

50L to go 500kM is 10kM to the liter. Or about 23MPG. Not good.

Unless we come up with a serious breakthrough on hydrogen production it'll never happen.

There are several groups working on describing how photosynthesis actually works in plants. It is theorized that the process would yield us all the hydrogen we wanted. But that is still a few years off.

Re:Not very efficient

[Flying Purple Wombat]

The efficiency isn't spectacular, but that's only part of the issue. What does 1L of hydrogen cost using this method? If the price is low, say $0.25USD per liter, then the low efficiency is a non-issue.

Another factor is the waste products of producing the hydrogen pellets. Burning the H gives only H20, which is a non-issue. But what about the manufacturing process? And, as others mentioned, what happens to the pellets once the H is extracted?

Re:Not very efficient

[jilbert]

There are several groups working on describing how photosynthesis actually works in plants.

It is extremely well described. The problem is replicating it with an artificial system.

Re:Not very efficient

[Waffle Iron]

Or about 23MPG. Not good.

It doesn't make sense to directly compare gasoline and plastic pellets on a volume basis to evaluate efficiency. The MPG number is only useful to show that the size of the fuel tank is in the same ballpark as those current cars, making it more feasible than bulky storage methods such as compressed gaseous hydrogen.

To evaluate efficiency, you need to measure the miles driven per unit of energy put into the hydrogen production facility.

Re:Not very efficient

[Angstroem]

50L to go 500kM is 10kM to the liter. Or about 23MPG. Not good.

Now compare it to the energy density of Hydrogen compared to gasoline, and you will see what? (Oh, and mind you, we're talking about combustion engines -- not nuclear fusion. Just in case you let yourself be fooled by absolute numbers placed out of context again...)

Ever used so-called "bio diesel" (RME) instead of mineral-oil based diesel? Spotted a difference in consumption and gave a thought where that difference originated from?

Btw, hydrogen production is easy. We have plenty of deserts on this planet with hot sunny days, which are just perfect for all-solar powered hydrogen fabs. Just pump (even used) water there.

The problems were rather storage and transport of H2, which just doesn't like to be kept imprisoned and leaked out of the bottle. If that pellet stuff is working as advertised, that problem is solved.

Re:Not very efficient

[udoschuermann]

50L to go 500kM is 10kM to the liter. Or about 23MPG. Not good.

It depends entirely on the production cost of these pellets, hence the price to the consumer. This price may be high initially but economies of scale should drop it. But even if the price for the consumer is about equivalent to gasoline, the lower (or maybe nil) environmental impact of this type of hydrogen fuel is likely worth the switch.

Re:Not very efficient

[Overzeetop]

Actually, there is a minor correlation. The larger the energy storage container is, the larger the vehicle must be. That generally results in increases in mass and volume, reducing the efficiency due to increased internal component friction and wind resistance (with regenerative breaking and/or coasting down hill w/o brakes, some losses of lifting more mass up a hill are effectively recovered).

The ohter part is practicality. It's a marketing issue for electric cars - you have to drive a large vehicle, or one with no storage space in order to fit the batteries in for a long journey.

Much of this will disappate if the cost per mile is sufficiently low. That's the real driver, not the actual energy efficiency. Unless you're a hard-core tree hugger, the efficiency of the process will pale in comparison to the cost. If you could make the pellets hold twice as much for the same energy cost, but the dollar cost was 1.5x based on the driven mile, would you buy the more expensive product? (Realise that the efficiency will not produce a vehicle with double the range, as the "tank" for these high efficiency pellets will be made smaller, just as it is is gasoline cars)

Re:Not very efficient

[joib]

Actually, since what matters is the energy consumption, and this method according to the article delivers 13 MJ/l, it looks very efficient. That's about 1.3 MJ/km.

Compare that to a normal gasoline car that does, say, 7 l/100 km. Gasoline having an energy density of about 45 MJ/l this works out to 3.15 MJ/km.

That is, the hypothesis is that the hydrogen car would be 2.4 times as efficient as the current gasoline car.

Re:Not very efficient

[klang]

50L to go 500kM is 10kM to the liter. Or about 23MPG. Not good.

Maybe the technology has room for improvement? Remember that this is the first generation of theese 'pills' and that they have been made in a university lab. If I could have one of theese 'pill machines' connected to the sunpanel on the roof and the windmill in the backyard, I could probably be producing all the energy I wanted to use in my future electric car!

Getting the hydrogen is generally not that dificult, there are many ways to obtain it (sun, wind, waves). The problem is storage.

And by the way, in Denmark, you can only drive about 555 km if you try to go as far as you can .. so, 50liters of theese pills would be sufficient ;-)

Re:Not very efficient

[geekpolitico]

If we can use deserts to generate Hydrogen, then we are in luck as we are getting more desert all the time!

The price of hydrogen

[Colin Smith]

Depends completely on where the energy you use to manufacture it comes from.

Which one

[panxerox]

Its either 1. A real solution to energy storage and one of the greatest inventions of all time.
2. Not i.e. overhyped product with a very poorly writen webpage. vaporware anyone :) Let me know when everybody figures it out.

This is how they get it back out:

[SteakandcheeseUm]

Heat

Better article

[Akbar]

A better article which goes into a bit more detail about the pellets can be found at this french website http://www.achats-industriels.com/actualites/dossi ers/269.asp/.

The google translation is available at http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr& u=http://www.achats-industriels.com/actualites/dos siers/269.asp&prev=/search%3Fq%3Damminex%26hl%3Den %26lr%3D/.

This is an interesting storage solution but to really evaluate this we need to know more about the process to extract hydrogen and the waste products involved and their potential re-uses.

22.6 MPG. for Americans

[spineboy]

That's what this car will get on H2 fuel.
500 KM = 300 miles
50L = 13.29 gallons
300/13.3=22.6 MPG
  There is no tax on cars that avg at least 22.5 MPG
Here are some numbers taken from the US DOT for the gas guzzler taxes

at least 21.5, but less than 22.5 $1000
at least 20.5, but less than 21.5 $1300
at least 19.5, but less than 20.5 $1700
at least 18.5, but less than 19.5 $2100
at least 17.5, but less than 18.5 $2600
at least 16.5, but less than 17.5 $3000
at least 15.5, but less than 16.5 $3700
at least 14.5, but less than 15.5 $4500
at least 13.5, but less than 14.5 $5400
at least 12.5, but less than 13.5 $6400
less than 12.5 $7700

Re:22.6 MPG. for Americans

[klang]

and as a car running on H2 would not use Gas, no tax whould be applicable! woohoo!

Another link

[Wassini]

I did post this several hours ago but it was rejected. Her is another link to DTU news section

Fossil Fuel problem solved?

[erroneus]

There's a lot about this technology I don't understand. For one, what does the extraction process require? While using this stuff, what is the waste amount? Can they be "recharged"? And if so, how?

The article is little more than an announcement in that there's not much I could see in the way of "how it works." Since this is patented perhaps someone who knows how to read that stuff could be asked to interpret it for the rest of us?

I'd like nothing more that to shed our dependancy on fossil fuels for personal/individual use. Do you realize how much world peace could result from that change? The middle east could go back to being what it was -- a useless desert area inhabited only by archaeologists and nomaic people. :) The U.S. would no longer need to control anything over there... suddenly terrorists have a lot less to complain about. I can only dream.

We stand to gain a LOT more than just a cleaner atmosphere and potentially cheaper fuel costs.... a LOT more.

Hydrogen

[FirienFirien]

This doesn't change the fact that hydrogen is only a storage medium - you have to spend energy creating it, and you lose a little energy when you change it back again. All in all, we're currently looking at spending 2.5 times as much energy as you get out.

Thing is, this hydrogen is currently derived from... you guessed it, petroleum. So essentially, you're burning 125 litres or gallons of fuel to get 50 litres or gallons' worth of car movement.

It's not all bad - you can make hydrogen from any power source, so you can have a fully environment-friendly hydroelectric hydrogen generator. However, that's less efficient than burning up petroleum to make the hydrogen, so for the moment hydrogen is worse for the environment than simply burning fuel; the only 'plus' side is that the dirty waste products are released away from your car and from town, so the pollution is moved away from cities to specific fuel burning areas. We can only hope that it's easier to clean up there.

Re:Hydrogen

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, currently the UK economy has an excess of hydrogen from the Chlor-Alkali industry (which produces hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide). Some is recovered and sold, while the rest is vented into the atmosphere. While this doesn't produce enough hydrogen to run an economy, it does lower the barriers to early adoption and means that we don't have to burn a single gram more of fossil fuels in order to start a hydrogen economy. I don't know if the US is the same (I presume it is) but I'm sure if Dubya hears about it, he'll personally head up an investigation into why the chemical industry should be scrapped as it removes the need for more oil and hence the need to invade middle-eastern countries.

Re:Hydrogen

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't change the fact that hydrogen is only a storage medium - you have to spend energy creating it, and you lose a little energy when you change it back again. All in all, we're currently looking at spending 2.5 times as much energy as you get out.

Based on...? I think nuclear energy can achieve better results, around 2 to 1...petroleum also involves significant costs to obtain, refine and transport. Your analysis ignores nuclear, which is the obvious clean, safe way to generate hydrogen.

Re:Hydrogen

[narcc]

I'm sure if Dubya hears about it, he'll personally head up an investigation into why the chemical industry should be scrapped as it removes the need for more oil and hence the need to invade middle-eastern countries.

[Assuming you're joking] He (GWB) could always just invade middle-eastern countries for sport while Pat Robertson is busy assassinating the president of Venezuela...

Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[CyricZ]

This technology would render gas stations obsolete. Why would you need to drive to such a station in order to drop a small pellet into your pellet tank? It's completely unnecessary! You could easily buy a bag of these pellets from your local hardware or grocery store, and refill your vehicle in the comfort of your own garage!

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[Maian]

No, it would depends on how heavy the pellets are and how much hydrogen they store.

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[Nyh]

This technology would render gas stations obsolete. Why would you need to drive to such a station in order to drop a small pellet into your pellet tank? It's completely unnecessary! You could easily buy a bag of these pellets from your local hardware or grocery store, and refill your vehicle in the comfort of your own garage!

Usually I need to refil my vehicle while I am on may way to some destination. I don't use my car to drive to the local hardware store so I can buy pellets to put into my car in the garage.

I would find it really cumbersome to leave the highway, find a grocery or hardware store, park, get my bag of pellets, wait some time in the que at the checkout, put the pellets in my car and drive back to the highway, just to fill up my car with some fuel.

Nyh

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[hesiod]

> Why would you need to drive to such a station in order to drop a small pellet into your pellet tank?

Because it is not just one pellet you would have to drop in, it's quite a few pellets. So therefore, you would have to store a lot of them somewhere.

With that in mind, you could argue that you can just buy a storage tank for gasoline and put it in your yard, never needing to go to the gas station.

You would have to refill your little silo of pellets somehow, just like you would have to refill your tank of gasoline.

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[CyricZ]

"Pellet" implies "small", to the point of being easily handled in large numbers by a human.

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[CyricZ]

The pellets come in a bag (much like dog food or bird seed). You get a decent sized funnel, and you pour the pellets from the bag into the pellet tank of your vehicle. Not very difficult!

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, the pellets are carriers, not the fuel itself. So, I imagine they are depleted, not consumed. It would still be convenient to have stations where you empty your tank of spent pellets and refill with loaded ones. And, like current gas stations, it's useful to have these type of pellet exchange stations located along roadways where people are likely to need fuel, and as a site for disposing of reusable spent pellets.

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[MrCreosote]

Except you have to remove the 'empty' pellets from your car first.

The pellets don't get consumed, they are only used to store the hydrogen.

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[parc]

I would find it really cumbersome to leave the highway, find a grocery or hardware store, park, get my bag of pellets, wait some time in the que at the checkout, put the pellets in my car and drive back to the highway, just to fill up my car with some fuel.

s/grocery or hardware store/gas station/g
s/checkout/pump/g
s/get my bag of pellets//

I'm trying to figure out how you got an "insightful" Mod, and just not seeing it.

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[booch]

You can't store gasoline all that long actually. I know some of it would evaporate. I'm not sure what the other problems with long-term storage are, perhaps the components compounds separate, or they slowly react to form some other compounds. Not to mention that it's probably not the best idea to have everyone in the business of storing large quantities of volatile liquids next to their barbeque pits.

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[hesiod]

> it's probably not the best idea to have everyone in the business of storing large quantities of volatile liquids

Yeah, I thought of that after posting & slapped myself... I also guess there might be federal (or at least state) regulations about keeping large quantities of gasoline, although I don't really know.

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[booch]

Gas stations around here dig up their tanks if they close and aren't immediately bought. There must be some regulations requiring that they dig up their tanks so they don't sit there for a long time and start leaking into the surrounding ground. I also suspect that gas stations have to post some sort of bond to ensure that there's money left to remove the tanks after they go out of business.

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[hesiod]

Good point, you are probably right about the bond, or at least some kind of legal liability.

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[CyricZ]

That's inefficient, then. I'm sure a method to obtain energy from the pellet casings (assuming you're correct and they're not consumed) could be devised and implemented.

Re:Why would a "gas station" be needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe the pellets get refilled later.

Almost forgot...

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

The only byproduct of combustion is gold dust out of the tailpipe and the aroma of lavender.

Background info.....

[CnlPepper]

A bit of background info found doing a quick google:

http://lww.kt.dtu.dk/pdf_publications/department/D TU_04.pdf

Not much there but adds a bit more ligitimacy to the claims. Its a university annual report from the Technical University of Denmark, see pages 24-26.

WRONG!! we get 22.6 MPG

[spineboy]

please see my other post - basically
500 km = 300 miles
50L = 13.3 gallons
300/13.3 = 22.6 MPG

This is all well and good, but

[DJCacophony]

What is it's milage ( in miles of course, one would wonder why it was given in litres )? Not trying to start a flamewar, but I dont know what a MJ/L is.

Re:This is all well and good, but

[demon]

MJ/l is megajoules per litre, which is a representation of potential stored energy per unit of mass. Of course, I'm not sure how good the quoted amount is exactly, relative to gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, etc.

Re:This is all well and good, but

[Anonymous Coward]

MJ/L = Million Joules per Liter?

Re:This is all well and good, but

[demon]

Er, that's per unit of volume, not mass, since litres aren't grams...

Re:This is all well and good, but

[Anonymous Coward]

( in miles of course, one would wonder why it was given in litres )?

Um, besides the fact that the world of science generally uses the metric system, the researchers and company involved are Danish - so they wouldn't be using the archaic system to begin with.

Royal TripMaster Monkey to You

[Quirk]

"...we'd appreciate less speculation in the future."

I assume, as you aren't an editor, you have ascended to Royalty in your usage of the Royal We. Let me be the first to Welcome our new /. bashing Overlord.

If you could give me somekind of pointer on how to ascend to Your Highness, I would be forever grateful.

I look forward to Your Highness first "We are not amused post.

Re:Royal TripMaster Monkey to You

[CyricZ]

How DARE you besmirch the reputation of TripMaster Monkey!

Re:Royal TripMaster Monkey to You

[databyss]

I don't know about We, but I wasn't amused.

Re:Royal TripMaster Monkey to You

[Aztechian]

"If you could give me somekind of pointer on how to ascend to Your Highness, I would be forever grateful."

Highness* doAscention()
{
      Highness* overlord;
      if( user.name == "TripMaster Monkey" )
      {
            overlord = new Highness();
      }
      else
      {
            overlord = NULL;
      }
      return overlord;
}

Just add this function. I await the commencement of your gratitude.

Re:Royal TripMaster Monkey to You

[Mignon]

I assume, as you aren't an editor, you have ascended to Royalty in your usage of the Royal We.

I'm no grammarian, but "we" might also be appropriate if TripMasterMonkey is a Beowulf cluster of Slashdot posting bots.

Oh, the Humanity!

[Anonymous Coward]

+1, obscure technical reference. Well done!

Geez, I'm glad the problem is so well defined

[thorpie]

Now, lets just look at the problem. We currently jump into a car weighing 1500 kg, running a 20% efficient motor, to transport an 80 kg person. This is an efficiency of 1.01%, which is what the problem really is.

Hydrogen power, well it solves none of the major problem.

And we are the intelligent species on the planet!

Re:Geez, I'm glad the problem is so well defined

[RevMike]

Big deal. The theoretical maximum efficiency of a heat engine running at similar temperatures is only 40%, so at a real world 20% you are doing well. And sure, we can use a smaller, lighter vehicle, although that very quickly becomes unreasonable from both convenience and safety issues. A fuel cell, on the other hand, can be practically operated at 40%-70% efficiency. That helps a lot.

Exactly

[Deliveranc3]

Do the pellets consist of a carbon atom?

This sounds disturbingly like conventional fuel.

When the hydrogren breaks from the pellet is it replaced with oxygen? Does the resulting greenhouse gas flow into the upper atmosphere?

Does this product have the same problem as hydrocarbon fuels in that it's increadibly expensive to produce? In terms of efficiency and equipment.

I guess I just expected some real information about this magnitude of bullshit, er, breakthrough.

Re:Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the pellets consist of a carbon atom?

No

This sounds disturbingly like conventional fuel

They're not a fuel at all - the 'storage' reaction is reversible.

I can't wait for the VW conversion kit...

[JoeCommodore]

So my wife's hydorgen Rabbit can be littlering the roadside with pellets. :-D

Alternative danish news sources

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where he found the information but at this time it's cirulating the danish press as this was developed by DTU (Danish Technical University). This was the story i submited to slashdot just a few minutes ago. All of the below articles are in danish:

A research team at DTU (Danish technical University) have solved the number one obstacle in making hydrogen fuel feasable in the automotive industry namely how to store hydrogen. Their solution is to chemicaly bind hydrogen in the form of amonium to salt in the shape of a small asprin pill. According to the research team an ordinary 50 liter fuel tank would allow a hydrogen fueled car to drive 500km using this technology and the pills cannot be ignited in this form as the image in the above article illustrates. According to this article the technology will be revealed tomorrow at a large press conference in Chicago and in the science journal of Materials Chemistry.

And what is the advantage, please???

[Pig Hogger]

Oh, goody lordly. And now, where all that hydrogen is going to come from? From dwindling natural gas supplies (unless everyone is fitted with a methane collector and fed 5 kg of burritos every day)? Or from water electrolyzed with electricity coming from coal fired or nuclear power plants???

Re:And what is the advantage, please???

[Blitzenn]

"And now, where all that hydrogen is going to come from? From dwindling natural gas supplies"

Natural Gas is where it (hydrogen fuel) is currently being manufactured from. In 2004 a (Department of Energy) study was done to calculate the expense/efficiency of the whole process. At the Natural Gas prices at the time, 50% less than today, it was calculated that the price per gallon of the resultant fuel would be $4.00 per gallon. Today that would be roughly $6.00/gallon. As long as the manufacturing of Hydrogen fuel remains tied directly to the price of Fossil fuels, such as it is now, it will never be cheaper and will never become a viable alternative. Another, efficient, process needs to be found and resource for Hydrogen needs to be found. Despite all of the chatter, there is no efficient method to harvest Hydrogen (yet) except from fossil fuels.

Based on the current pricing of Hydrogen fuel an the miles per gallon noted (23 miles per gallon), a Hydrogen powered vehicle today, will cost you significantly more to operate than a fossil fuel car. Despite the great advance of being able to store it safely now, the cost of the fuel is prohibitive if not chokingly restrictive. Although there is no way to argue that harvesting Hydrogen from water can ever be efficient (as it essentially requires the process of 'unburning' water), with a push for more Nuclear power facilites (as found in the recently passed US Energy bill), we could use that as a price stable resource for Hydrogen. Electricity produced from a non-fossil resource in large quanties, as needed to harvest large quantities of Hydrogen from (perhaps even polluted, non-potable) water. In-efficient, but no longer coupled to the rising cost of fossil fuels.

Molar mass : 2g/mol-10l/g, not 1

[jmcoursi]

Thought that the molar mass of hydrogen was about 2g/mol (for molecular hydrogen H2). 1 mole = 22.4 liters in the usual conditions. So where does come the claim 1g H2 -> 1 liter H2 ? Should be more like 1h H2 -> 11 liters. Am I forgotting my chemistry courses ? Can they only extract 10% of the stored hydrogen ? Or what ?

Re:Molar mass : 2g/mol-10l/g, not 1

[finrock]

Whatever binds the hydrogen must have mass itself. Perhaps only 10% of the weight of the pellet is hydrogen.

Battlestar Galactica 1980

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, flying motorcycles will run on energy pills like in Battlestar Galactica 1980? Remember where a dry pill could fill the tank?

And now 1 gram = 1 litre hydrogen? That sounds so fantastically similar you'd think it will turn out to be a hoax by an SF fan.

Some information

[ben_of_copenhagen]

Danish website ing.dk (run by the danish union of engineers) says in their article, that the hydrogen is store as ammonia in pellets made of seasalt. The hydrogen is released by way of a catalyst (they dont explain how or which catalyst is needed). But i suppose this means the pellets are highly reuseable. If you can read danish, theres a lot more here: http://ing.dk/article/20050907/MILJO/109090025

Re:Some information

[Pharmboy]

A better link of the same or similar article in English was given above at http://www.dtu.dk/English/About_DTU/News.aspx?guid =%7BE6FF7D39-1EDD-41A4-BC9A-20455C2CF1A7%7D

Re:Some information

[Anonymous Coward]

Moose bites kan be pretti nasti

Re:Some information

[SmittyTheBold]

I can eat danish; does that count?

Rough translation of most important part

[maxm]

The pill consists of ammonia absorbed in ordinary seasalt.

The ammonia is made catalytical by combining atmospheric Hydrogen and Nitrogen.

It can be stored as long as necessary.

Only when the ammonia is passed through a catalyst the Hydrogen is released.

When the pellet is emptied, it just needs a new shot of Ammonia to be ready again.

(I believe that heating is necessary in the catalyst)

Stuff Aminex!

[Blancmange]

Carbon nanotube technology looks far more promising:

http://www.e-sources.com/hydrogen/storage.html

"One of the most exciting advances recently has been the announcement of carbon nanofibre technology. This may have the capacity to store up to 70% of hydrogen by weight - an astonishing amount. Typically a metal hydride can store between 2% and 4% by weight - in a heavy structure, but if the new carbon results actually prove to be true then it may be possible for a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle to travel for 5,000 km between refuelling stops. This would render any necessity for a distributed hydrogen infrastructure obsolete as the refuelling could be done either by depot stops, or potentially even through the postal service! Everyone in the hydrogen community is eagerly awaiting the announcement of further news."

Re:Stuff Aminex!

[Bearpaw]

This would render any necessity for a distributed hydrogen infrastructure obsolete as the refuelling could be done either by depot stops, or potentially even through the postal service!

Woot! A whole new way of going postal!

Re:No. ICE CUBES

[pete-classic]

Are you kidding? At standard temperature and pressure those things are highly unstable! They undergo a state change which causes a substantial transfer of energy from their surrounding environment.

This can be used directly to keep a cocktail cold, or indirectly to keep beer cold. On the other hand, I think we have a long way to go in materials science before we just start carrying these things willy-nilly in our cars.

-Peter

Already being done

[Spy Handler]

A number of companies are doing this already, like the Ovonic guys. Wired also has a story about this here.

The Amminex guys in TFA are light on details so it's hard to tell what exactly they're doing differently or better.

I've found some more info

[woutgaze]

But it's only in French. http://www.achats-industriels.com/actualites/dossi ers/269.asp

Google Translate to the rescue: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr& u=http://www.achats-industriels.com/actualites/dos siers/269.asp&prev=/search%3Fq%3DAMMINEX%2B%26hl%3 Den%26hs%3DWxJ%26lr%3D%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls% 3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official

Buckyballs

[Anonymous Coward]

C60 molecules are round, and could be broken apart and combined with hydrogen to make hydrocarbons. These molecules have a very high energy density - among the highest known. To release the energy you use a simple process called combustion, and the products of complete combustion are CO2 and water. Only problem is that the pellets are destroyed and need to be replaced.

Re:Buckyballs

[mrchaotica]

In theory, the only products of normal gasoline combustion are CO2 and water, too. The trouble is that you never have complete combustion (and the temperatures involved cause some of the nitrogen in the air to react as well). All buckyballs would possibly accomplish is maybe figuring out an artificial process to make gas (which wouldn't be all that bad an idea; electricity -> gasoline -> combustion engine makes at least as much sense as electricity -> hydrogen -> fuel cell).

Terrible article, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot of info missing! The company is working together with The Danish Technical University (DTU) and they made a Danish only press release with a lot more information:

http://www.dtu.dk/Nyheder/Pressemeddelelser/DTU-fo rskere%20opfinder%20brintpille.aspx

Here's a rough translation. Pardon any errors:

DTU scientists invent hydrogen pellet

Scientists at the Danish Technical University has figured out a technology that can allow civilization to be independent of fossile fuels: A hydrogen pellet which securely and cheaply can store hydrogen with an unseen efficiency.

With the Danish hydrogen pellet, everyone can take advantage of the environmentally friendly energy of hydrogen.

Hydrogen can deliver a completely pollution free energi, but since it's a form of gas, it takes up too much space and is a firehazard. Efficient and safe storage of hydrogen is a problem that scientists have attempted to solve over the past 25 years. Now we have a solution. Scientists at DTU have managed to make a hydrogen pellet, which makes it possible to transport and store hydrogen, completely without the risks normally attributed with hydrogen.

"Should one drive a car 600 km with hydrogen in gas form, it would require a gas tank the size of 9 cars. With our solution, it's possible to store the same amount of hydrogen in a normal gas tank", explains Claus Hviid Christensen, professor at the Chemical Institute at DTU.

DTU's hydrogen pellet is completely safe and very economic. Thereby it's different from other technologies. You can litterall carry it in your pocket without any safety devices. The reason is that the pellet consists only of ammonium absorbed in ordinary seasalt. Ammonium is stored catalytically by the combination of the hydrogen and nitrogen, and DTU's hydrogen pellet binds large amounts of hydrogen this way.

The pellet can store hydrogen for as long as it takes. First when the ammonium is directed through a catalyst, the hydrogen is released. When the hydrogen is gone, you can give it another shot of ammonium and it's ready for use again.

The technology is a step towards a society where we are independent on oil. This is the message from Jens Nørskov, centre leader at NANO-DTU. He as well as Claus Hviid Christensen, Tue Johannessen, Ulrik Quaade and Rasmus Zink Sørensen are the five scientists behind the hydrogen pellet. The advantages of using hydrogen as a fuel is many: For example, it's CO2 neutral and can be made by wind power.

"We have achieved a very important goal in a process towards a hydrogen based society; namely to achieve a very cheap base technology. Under all circumstances, we can see today that fossile fuels will not last and without fuel, there's no reason to discuss anything else. Without energy, no modern society can function, because this is what civilization is based on," says Jens Nørskov.

In cooperation with DTU and SeeD Capital, researchers have created the company Amminex A/S, which will be the place to develop and commercialize the technologi.

PICTURE CAPTION:

Director of the new hydrogen pellet company Amminex A/S, Tue Johannesen, is attempting without success to ignite the hydrogen pellet. The pellet is the world's safest way to store hydrogen in, today.

Re:Terrible article, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that Nitrogen is then released in the process, too. How to (practically) separate the two, as the latter won't burn?

Re:Terrible article, but..

[mfrank]

Given that oh, about 70% of the "oxidizer" that your internal combustion car or a hypothetical hydrogen powered fuel cell car would use is nitrogen, I don't see it being much of a problem.

The next logical step

[tsmithnj]

would be to figure out a way to extract and ignite the hydrogen upon impact. Then we could shoot these from a gun. It would be a really neat and new way to kill people.

Muching Pelletts - PacMan

[Calathea]

Surly PacMan had the idea of pellets as a fuel source several years before this. If only Ms PacMan had of nagged him to register the patent they could of got someone in to rid them of Blinky et al.

Spinoff from the DTU (Denmark Tech University)

[zeoslap]

From their site they are a spinoff from the Denmark Tech Univeristy who do a lot of research into storing hydrogen in Metal Hydrides here

It's a Very Technical Process

[Greyfox]

And I can't reveal too much for fear of revealing trade secrets, but I can give you a hint. It involves a large number of gerbils and a number of spinning wheels...

Re:Hold on, more info in the summary than the arti

[cfsmp3]

So where did the submitter get this extra data? If this data is correct, we'd appreciate a link.

If, however, this detail in the summary is unsubstantiated, we'd appreciate less speculation in the future.

Did you become royalty overnight?

Those wanting to know more...

[C_Kode]

About the hydrogen fuel storage problems for cars

http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-10/iss-1/p20.htm l

Not flamable

[Anonymous Coward]

According to this danish press release from the research team at DTU (Danish Technical University) who developed this, it is not flamable at all. Take a look at the picture in the artical.

Energy Storage

[exi1ed0ne]

This isn't much to go on, and pellet storage of H has been around for a while.

What would make this really interesting and useful is the ease of recharging the pellets. Hydrogen is nothing but a energy storage media after all (it takes energy to extract it from water, natural gas). Imagine solar panels on the top of your car recharging the pellets while your parked - Just add water. That is really the breakthrough we need.

Great thing about water as a fuel source

[benhocking]

The great thing about water as a fuel source is that the fuel (H2) and oxidizer (O) are combined in one easy-to-use package!

Hydrogen Supply

[Mark_MF-WN]

Well, assuming that the hydrogen is extracted from water, the "supply" of hydrogen will still be tied to the supply of electricity. The whole hydrogen economy idea is closely tied to the notion that we'll have lots of relatively clean electricity in the future. In places like Canada that have low person to river ratios, that is practically already achieved. It's a much more daunting task in places like the UK or the USA, which have much higher person to river ratios.

In any case, a hundred years from now when we're all hypothetically driving hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, there could still be supply shortages. Suppose a major storm hit Greenland and disabled the UltrapowerMax 5000 Greenland Wind Farm for a week; the reduction in globally available power would increase electricity prices, thereby increasing hydrogen prices... hypothetically. Not as badly as with oil, but the potential for problems is still there.

I have one of those, also.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine involves cubes, not pellets.

Solution!

[Bearpaw]

Now, lets just look at the problem. We currently jump into a car weighing 1500 kg, running a 20% efficient motor, to transport an 80 kg person. This is an efficiency of 1.01%, which is what the problem really is.

So if everybody eats enough to double their weight, the resulting efficiency would be dramatically increased. (Meanwhile, having cleverly intuited this for themselves, many people in the US have already begun the process ...)

Not to start a religious war...

[benhocking]

but Dr. Pepper is the more reliable liquid measure conversion device! Luckily, this time Mtn. Dew agrees with the good Doctor. (I've always wondered, is he a Ph.D, an M.D., or some other kind of Doctor?)

Re:Not to start a religious war...

[The Wooden Badger]

I think Dr. Pepper is a D.O. They tend to have a better bedside manner.

Re:Not to start a religious war...

[eln]

You really need to become more familiar with your drink of choice there, buddy. While it's true that it's pronounced "Doctor Pepper," it's actually spelled "Dr Pepper". There is no dot.

Clean up the gene pool

[jurt1235]

It will reduce the gene pool in such a case. It will probably not clean it up: Heavy toxins make the abnormal ones survive, probably with nice new additions to the genes to make the gene lottery even more interesting for a next generation.

Re:Clean up the gene pool

[ghukov]

can you say Toxic Avenger? :P

Like this. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Step 1. Put wall in river.

Step 2. Install generators.

Step 3. Observe the magic of gravity.

Step 4. Proft.

Despite claims to the contrary, there are plenty of alternative and highly effective ways to generate electricity which do not involve burning things. We've been doing it for years.

If people stop consuming power like hogs, then there's no real problem here.

-FL

Energy density of Gasoline

[Blancmange]

Gasoline is about 34 MJ/L (megajoules per litre)
Gasoline is also about 45MJ/kg (megajoules per kilogram).

Aminex's pellets store energy at about a third of the density of gasoline by volume.

Whether you want to consider volume or mass (which amounts to weight in Earth's gravity) depends on the application. A fuel energy dense by weight is not much use if it requires a fuel tank the size of an airship, light as it is, to provide a useful range between refuelings.

Since a car running on pure hygrogen would likely to be using a fuel cell rather than a combustion engine, it's likely that the Aminsex pills in a fuel cell car can yield a bit more milage than gasoline could with an internal combustion engine. You wouldn't want to use gasoline on a fuel cell because it clogs up the fuel cell after a while.

BTW, 1 litre is equal to a cube 10cm across and one litre of water has a mass of one kilogram. That means a 30 litre bottle, say, of Coke should be about 30kg.

Re:How does it come out? - Many ways

[ThingOne]

Looks like pellets for hydrogen exists from several different companies.

This article: http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumerinfo/factsheets /a109.html

"A company in Utah, Power Ball Technologies, has developed a process in which sodium metal is pelletized and encapsulated with polyethylene plastic. The pellets can then be containerized, transported, and then opened in a patented hydrogen generator to produce hydrogen gas. According to the company, each gallon of these pellets is capable of producing 1,307 gallons of hydrogen gas, which is an equivalent hydrogen storage density more than 7 times greater by volume than a compressed hydrogen tank storing hydrogen at 3,000 psi."

I found another aritcle where pellets go through a chemical reaction to release hydrogen.

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=13355&hed =New+Hydrogen-Making+Method

Not sure if these methods are related to the article above, but may lead to more information

A pity

[Hasai]

It's a pity that no-one ever did this sort of safety hand-wringing over far more dangerous substances, such as gasoline and jet fuel.
:P

What's that in American?

[John Jorsett]

enabling a car to drive more than 500 km on a 50 L tank

That would be 311 miles in 13.2 gallons.

Hah! I spit on your so-called metric system.

Re:What's that in American?

[drewzhrodague]

My 2.2 Liter Subaru gets 350 miles on 13.2 gallons of gasoline. This is better how?

Re:What's that in American?

[Stephen Williams]

I thought Americans measured such things in football fields per Library of Congress, or something.

-Stephen

Re:What's that in American?

[drew]

nope. rods per hogshead...

Re:What's that in American?

[ricosalomar]

Um, just a guess, the gasoline part.

Re:What's that in American?

[John Jorsett]

My 2.2 Liter Subaru gets 350 miles on 13.2 gallons of gasoline. This is better how?

The 13.2 gallons is the capacity of the tank holding the hydrogenated material. It doesn't really tell one what sort of mileage one is getting per cubic foot of gaseous hydrogen. I'm guessing they started with the question of what range per "fillup" they wanted to achieve, and sized the tank acccordingly.

Re:What's that in American?

[Anonymous Coward]

My football field IS the Library of Congress!

Re:What's that in American?

[booch]

Well, if it costs 5% as much and pollutes 1% as much, why wouldn't you use it? Those numbers are made up, but I don't understand why you would compare the 2. The only major thing that those numbers tell you are how often you'd have to fuel up, and (assuming nearly the same density) how much energy is wasted by carrying the fuel.

Re:What's that in American?

[JohnsonWax]

Uh, spit is the metric measurement. Loogie is imperial.

Re:What's that in American?

[nightznoe]

or about 23.56 mpg...but hey I might not know my math

More detail about the process

[Anonymous Coward]

Like most of /. I was looking for some more information on the hydrogen process. Here's a link from the Technical University of Denmark, where Amminex researchers work: http://www.dtu.dk/English/About_DTU/News/Making%20 society%20independent%20of%20fossil%20fuels%20-%20 Danish%20researchers%20reveal%20new%20technology.a spx

more info fta

[brenddie]

Within the tablet, hydrogen is stored as long as desired, and when hydrogen is needed, ammonia is released through a catalyst that decomposes it back to free hydrogen. When the tablet is empty, you merely give it a "shot" of ammonia and it is ready for use again

More information...

[chhamilton]

I've found another (from June) article here (in french). For a long time people have been talking about ammonia as hydrogen storage, as it's quite high in energy density and is a relatively safe liquid. However, there are issues with gas expansion, pressurization and toxic fumes.

Essentially, these pellets are an ammonia storage system that stores ammonia nearly as efficiently (by weight and volume) as liquid ammonia. The above article says that they are relatively cheap to produce (initial costs of 1 euro/kilogram of material, which translates to roughly $12.88 USD for the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline). The article clearly states that the process is reversible, thus the base materials must be reusable. It does not state what the cost is of 'recharging' the pellets. The recharge cost would have to be at least 4x cheaper than production in order for it to be competitive with gasoline. The extraction technique is listed as 'desorption', which I imagine just means heating the pellets up and siphoning the extracted gas off. As for temperatures, and desorption rates, nothing is cited.

It doesn't state specifically how the reaction runs, but that ammonia is extracted from the pellets, which is then run through a standard ammonia converter (at temperatures of around 350 degrees celsius) to extract the hydrogen. It says the reaction runs quickly, so it's able to provide the hydrogen quickly enough.

The Amminex website has slightly more information available by clicking on the "ammonia storage" page, because it's the exact same technology as the hydrogen storage (link here)

Re: MOD PARENT UP

[Red Flayer]

Aynone who wants a little more detail (though not much) should definitely read the press release Nyh links to.

MPG is a meaningless stat

[Doverite]

Miles per gallon is meaningless in this comparison. Price per mile is all that matters. And even more importantly price per mile per horsepower is what matters. Gas MPG/hp hasn't changed since the 70's. I want a 200hp car that gets 35-40mpg, or a Hydrogen powered car that for example gets 17-20mpg at $1.00 a gallon or the equivalent.

Re:MPG is a meaningless stat

[klang]

a gallon of regular is $6.97 in Denmark .. that's the price for gas in most of Europe at the moment. Theese high gas prices will make people think about alternatives.

Re:MPG is a meaningless stat

[i41Overlord]

And even more importantly price per mile per horsepower is what matters. Gas MPG/hp hasn't changed since the 70's. I want a 200hp car that gets 35-40mpg, or a Hydrogen powered car that for example gets 17-20mpg at $1.00 a gallon or the equivalent

Gas MPG/Horsepower has changed a lot since the 70's. A new Corvette has 400 HP and gets about 18 mpg/28 mpg (city/highway).

It also depends on the type of engine in the car. If you have a naturally aspirated engine and you make it capable of producing more power, your gas mileage usually decreases a bit since you have to change the displacement/compression ratio/cam timing/etc, and it operates with that configuration all the time, it doesn't change (well the cam timing does nowadays).

However if you have a turbocharged car, making the engine capable of producing more power won't decrease the gas mileage. I have a 300ZX Twin Turbo that had 300 hp and got about 22 mpg (highway) when it was stock. After I increased the boost from 9.5 to 15 psi, I have about 400 hp and 450 lbs of torque. My gas milage stayed the same (during normal driving). That's because I didn't change the engine configuration, during normal driving, the engine doesn't operate any differently than it did before. While the wastegates on the turbochargers will now enable them to produce 15 psi of boost compared to 9.5 psi before, they aren't going to make that much unless I'm flooring it.

Now when I'm racing it, it will burn gas faster than it did before, since the potential for increased airflow increases the potential for fuel burn, and consequently potential for horsepower.

Basically, your engine will burn fuel at a rate that's proportional to the amount of horsepower it is producing at the moment. A 400 HP engine isn't always producing 400 hp... it's just capable of doing so.

Re:MPG is a meaningless stat

[Anonymous Coward]

400 hp and 450 lbs of torque

Are you sure about those numbers? Usually small displacement high revving engines produce less torque than horsepower, simply due to the method of calculating horsepower from torque.

hp=tq*rpm/5252

Re:MPG is a meaningless stat

[i41Overlord]

Are you sure about those numbers? Usually small displacement high revving engines produce less torque than horsepower, simply due to the method of calculating horsepower from torque.

hp=tq*rpm/5252

Yes, I got my car dyno'd. Don't forget that the torque curve of a turbo car looks much different than a naturally aspirated car at the same displacement. At 14.7 psi of boost, my 3 liter engine is cramming twice the amount of air into the combustion chamber than the non-turbo version of the 3 liter engine would. At 1 bar of boost, the torque will be about the same as a 6 liter NA engine.

For the non-turbo version of the engine, since you can't produce much more torque, you need to rev higher to produce the same amount of power. With the turbo version, you increase the boost, the torque increases, and as a result, the power goes up at a lower RPM.

Take Formula 1 cars for example. The modern naturally aspirated 3 liter F1 engines produce about 850 hp at 19,000 rpm. The older Turbo 1.5 liter F1 cars produced over 1,000 hp at around 11,000 rpm. By the math, you can see that an engine half the displacement produced much more torque, at a lower RPM, too.

When I dyno'd, I had 339 rwhp, and 389 rwtq.

Horsepower stats that car manufacturers use are taken at the engine's crankshaft, but if it's in your car you have to dyno it on a roller, which measures the power at the rear wheels. If you take into account the usual 18% drivetrain loss for a RWD car, 339 rwhp and 389 rwtq would calculate to 413.4 horsepower and 474.4 ft-lbs of torque at the crank.

Stock the car had 300 hp, and the 18% loss states that the car would make 246 hp. Commonly when dyno'd, they produce abotu 245 rear wheel hp.

I made 339 hp (at the rear wheels, about 413 hp at the crank) at 4600 rpm. To figure how much torque that is, if you multiply by 5252 and divide by 4600, it comes out to 471.7.

Hummer H2

[gearmonger]

So, um, what will the hydrogen-powered Hummer be called?

Re: Hummer H2

[Anonymous Coward]

How about:

The Hymmen^Hr

Re:Hummer H2

[British]

They could just call it the H. They could have an elaborate ad campaign saying the vehicle that was once hated by the community for its gas-guzzling ways is now eco-friendly. They just won't mention rollovers, parking problems, visibility, etc.

acceleration lag?

[mcraig]

I find myself wondering what the acceleration on a hydrogen powered car would be like, would the flow of hydrogen from these pellets be able to adapt quickly to driver requirements. That is if I stomp my foot on the accelerator is more hydrogen going to be able to release quickly to match the demand, or is the acceleration on these cars going to suck? *shrugs*

Scientific American

[boring, tired]

I recall seeing something like this on an episode of Scientific American Frontiers a few years ago. Alan Alda was talking to a scientist about his storage pellet which looked something like a hockey puck.

Alternative energy sources

[biraneto2]

People forget that in the future there will be no oil. Developing new energy sources is a very important task to keep our world going. We currently see how much our economy is bound to oil, and how it is affected by the rise of its price in stock markets around the world. Finding a similar alternative cheap energy source would create a big revolution.

Attended a lecture of one of the creators

[Aquatopia]

I had a physics lecture this morning at my university (Technical University of Denmark) and the teacher asked us whether we had seen today's newspapers about this invention. He then told us about this and that this was a project here at the university. Also he told us that he was one of the researchers for this project. So as far as I know this is indeed correct. Unfortunately he didn't go into any details about how this works but I'll be sure to ask him in a weeks time if I haven't seen any details :) Quite impressive I must say :)

Your wish, fulfilled

[Smallest]

Accord Hybrid: http://automobiles.honda.com/models/model_overview .asp?ModelName=Accord+Hybrid&bhcp=1&BrowserDetecte d=True

255hp, 29/37 mpg

Amazing improvement...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can greatly increase the energy density of your solution while making extraction even simpler. Through the addition of the cheap and abundant element Carbon I have developed a gooey syrup that allows for massive energy storage and lubrication potential. I call this slimy ooze, Carbohydrox. While still only produced in the lab, the incredible stability of Carbohydrox leads one to postulate that great reserves of it may be naturally occurring. Refined distillates of Carbohydrox have been shown to work in modern combustion engines producing 18 miles per gallon, even in HUGE SUVs!

In Real Units

[Bob Uhl]

In real units, that's more than 23 miles/gallon. So my car would need a larger tank to travel as far as it can now.

My concerns with hydrogen...

[digithead]

...have less to do with storing it (although this would seem promising) than with the energy required to produce it in a usable form for motor vehicles.

I've seen it stated that 96% of hydrogen comes from fossil fuels and thus refining it causes at least as much pollution as running cars on gas.

Maybe efficient, performance diesels like they have in Europe are the answer until fusion or something else comes along. I've seen recent tests where these are more efficient than the hybrids that everyone is hyping.

Re:My concerns with hydrogen...

[mark-t]

First of all, the hydrogen would be produced in large, commercial plants specially dedicated for this purpose, function in very much the same way as oil refineries do today, and as a result it would be exponentially simpler to implement and enforce stricter pollution control standards on the plants than it would be on many millions of mobile vehicles all over the place. Also, because it's functioning at a large scale, it's not improbable that it could perform the task more efficiently (with respect to the hydrogen produced) than an appropriate number of fossil fuel burning autombiles, further reducing the pollution.

Second of all, and more obviously, our best options for using hydrogen as a fuel are in the exploitation of surplus energy sources that are _NOT_ derived from fossile fuels. Geothermal, wind, solar, and nuclear are the ones that immediately come to mind in this respect. Some of these are too rare or too inefficient to be seen as having a surplus at the moment, but in all honesty, this is unlikely to be the case forever.

That said, the problem with electrolysing water to produce hydrogen has the nasty effect of taking away the water supply on the planet. I'm fully aware that the hydrogen combusts to produce water vapour and that in theory no mass should be lost, but of course that doesn't necesarrily mean that would actually happen. In particular, there is potential for hydrogen to be lost to the atmosphere without ever combusting into water vapour because of imperfect storage, pumping (connections between two storage containers), or transporting facilities. These amounts may of course be trace amounts relative to the total mass of hydrogen being worked with, but accumulated over the number of potential hydrogen vehicles in the world, it has the potential to be appreciable.

Re:My concerns with hydrogen...

[rdmiller3]

Hm, I wonder if leaked Hydrogen would have environmental effects. Would Hydrogen be potentially worse for the ozone layer than methane?

Re:My concerns with hydrogen...

[mark-t]

The most serious effect that leaked hydrogen would have is that it is not chemically combined with oxyggen to produce water via combustion, effectively diminishing the water supply on the planet if electolysis is the method used for obtaining that hydrogen in the first place.

Re:My concerns with hydrogen...

[otis wildflower]

..have less to do with storing it (although this would seem promising) than with the energy required to produce it in a usable form for motor vehicles.

Nuclear.

Re:My concerns with hydrogen...

[Anonymous Coward]

H2 is unstable. O3 is unstable. Worst case H2 bumps O3 and you get H2O and O2, depleting the ozone. You can't loose water by dumping H2 into the air. Also, by electrolizing that water you made free oxygens, which will either form O2 or find an H2. (or find an O2 and get hit by a photon, energizing it and allowing it to become O3)

The utopianists don't like clean and cheap energy

[wheelbarrow]

There is a definite sub-culture of folks out there, many of whom play on SlashDot, that do not want to see any sort of cheap and clean alternative to fossil fuels. These are the same people who say things like "we've got to get people out of their cars".

These folks are utopianists. They harbor a social agenda to force you to live your life on their terms. They see the rising costs and pollution from fossile fuels as a lever for gaining the control they need to remake society against most people's free will. They want to do things like move everyone into locally dense housing. Nobody will have their own free standing home and nobody will have the freedom to choose to drive their own car, on their own terms, whenever and wherever they like.

If this sounds like a nightmare to you then pray for clean and cheap alternative energy sources.

Little slow on the uptake, are we?

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 "I didn't get the joke"

Re:Little slow on the uptake, are we?

[schon]

As long as you're using the "royal we", then yes, you didn't get the joke. :o)

Hint: he's speaking literally. Think about it a little bit.

Re:Hold on, more info in the summary than the arti

[Snaller]

The article referenced mentions nothing regarding hydrogen loss

That's because its not an article, but some commercial blurp on the newly formed company. This information is in the pressreleases send out, most of which are only in Danish in the moment.

The closest thing at the moment is this. - and they even get it wrong by saying "[the]...hydrogen pill doesn't lose energy when it is used" - In a couple of days it should be all over.

Air pollution?

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you're burning the hydrogen with oxygen from the surrounding air, you'll still release smog-producing gasses.

Re:Air pollution?

[shawb]

You're releasing water. If this were done in an internal combustion engine, then the heat would cause nitrogen to react with oxygen to create NOx, but in a fuel cell this does not happen, IIRC. Also I think even if you are using internal combustion, it may be possible to burn hydrogen at a low enough temperature that the N2 + O2 -> NOx reaction does not occur (rather I should say that I do not know that this is impossible... I'm not a chemist.) I believe the problem with burning hydrocarbons is that lower temperature burning will result in incomplete burning meaning soot comes out of the tailpipe. To raise the temperature high enough for complete burning, then atmospheric nitrogen burns.

Getting the hydrogen out is easy

[Smalltimer]

I guess no one saw the entire eposide on hydrogen p ellet use and function. In that eppisode there was a man driving a hydrogen pellet powered car, in the dash he had a small pellet stove where he would reach in the back seat of the car "filled with pellets" and scoop some in whenever the car would loose momentum. - Overall its an interactive experience. We should be seeing larger stoves and shovels in the near future to accomodate the sports and power utility class vehicles. - I think this is all great, but what really worries me is when the entusiasts start messing with the stove and shovels sizes, overfeeding a hydrogen pellet stove could cause some undesirable effects.

Comparison to biological energy densities?

[mattr]

I was wondering if a liter of pellets would explode from flame or heat, and looking up the bound energy noted that orange juice packs twice the energy (nutritional value) per liter as these pellets. (I think simple sugar is 15% Hydrogen?)

Granted the big deal is not energy density but safety and maybe ease of use or reusability, does anyone know the energy density of say, ATP (adenosine tryphosphate)?

Technology or lack of it (really?) aside, would we not be making totally insane strides in energy efficiency if we had a tank full of ATP, or maybe just a tank of mitochondria and a keg of sugar water in the trunk? Would a gas tank of ATP be worse (explosively) than a truck full of fertilizer?

MOD PARENT UP!

[mrchaotica]

Biodiesel is a heck of a lot easier and cheaper to implement, and despite the fact that it involves burning hydrocarbons it doesn't contribute to global warming (since the carbon in question was in circulation to begin with).

+1

[I didn't]

"self-referenced joke"

Warning Label

[Skudd]

WARNING
DO NOT INGEST!!!

500 km on a 50 L tank

[slapout]

translates to roughly 300 miles on 13 gallons. Or about 23 miles to the gallon. My car (a sports car) already does that.

How is this better? Are we talking 500 km on one pellet?

Re:500 km on a 50 L tank

[aderusha]

Your car does that on a gallon of gasoline, not hydrogen. It still isn't at the energy density level of gas, but it's getting close. Oh and 0 emmisions, which we're pretty sure your sports car doesn't do.

Does this mean...

[kponto]

...US Department of Energy for 2015, enabling a car to drive more than 500 km on a 50 L tank...

Does this mean that we'll finally be on the metric system by then?

[ot] karma chameleons?

[wild_berry]

my pedantry-in-search-of-Slashdot-editorship requires me to note that Funny moderations are reputed to gain no karma. Just good feeling.

Re:Hold on, more info in the summary than the arti

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick and rough translation:

Scientists at the technical university of Denmark (Danmarks Tekniske Universitet - DTU) have discovered a technology, which can make the civilisation independent from fossil fuels: A hydrogen pellet, that can store hydrogen securely and cheaply with so far unseen efficiency.

With the danish hydrogen pellet everybody can exploit the environmental friendly energy of hydrogen. Hydrogen can deliver completely pollution free energy, but since it is a gas, it takes out to much space and is at the same time extremely flammable. Effective and secure storage or hydrogen is therefore a problem, that scientists all over the world unsuccessfully have tried to solve for more than 25 years. Now there is a solution to the problem. Scientists at DTU have achieved to create a pellet, that enable transport and storage of the hydrogen - completely free of any risks connected with the explosive gas.

"Should you run a car 600 km (approx. 370 miles) with hydrogen in the form of gas, you would need a tank the size of nine whole cars. With our solution the same quantity or hydrogen can be squeezed down in a normal fuel tank", explains Claus Hviid Christensen, professor at Institute of Chemistry at DTU.

DTU's hydrogen pellet is completely safe and very economical. With that it differentiates itself from all other known technologies. You can literally carry it in you pocket without any form for safety measures. The reason is that the pellet solely consists of ammonium absorbed in regular sea salt. Ammonium is created by a catalytic process by combining the airs nitrogen and hydrogen, and DTU's hydrogen pellet bind in that way large amounts of hydrogen. In the pellet the hydrogen can be stored as long as needed. Only when the ammonium is led through the catalyst the hydrogen is freed. When the pellet it emptied from hydrogen, you only need to give it another shot of ammonium - and it is ready for use again.

[Image: The manager of the new hydrogen pellet company Amminex A/S, Tue Johannesen, tries without success to light a pellet of hydrogen. The pellet is today the worlds safest way to store hydrogen.]

The technology is one step towards making the society independent from oil. This is the take of Jens Nørskov manager of the NANO-DTU center. He, Claus Hviid Christensen, Tue Johannessen, Ulrik Quaade and Rasmus Zink Sørensen are the five scientists behind the hydrogen pellet. The benefits of using hydrogen as fuel are many. Among others it is CO2-neutral and can be created from renewable forms of energy, as for instance wind power.

"We have reached a very important goal in a process of change on the road to the hydrogen society; that is to provide a very cheap base technology. In any case, we can see today, that the fossil fuels can not last indefinitely, and without energy there is no reason to discuss anything else. Without energy, there is no modern society, because it is what all of civilisation is based on", states Jens Nørskov.

In cooperation with DTU and SeeD Capital the scientists have now founded the company Amminex A/S, that will serve as the base of further development and commercialisation of this technology.

DoE has low standards

[harl]

Wow. 23 mpg by 2015.

We really need to set our goals higher. I get that in the city with a V6 already.

Lost in Space got it right!!

[dpilot]

...except for the name. They were always searching for "deutronium" fuel for their spacecraft. Whenever they found it, it came out looking like pellets, stored in a bottle. So either they got the name wrong, or now we know what we should be calling the AMMINEX pellets.

LUDDITE ALERT! LUDDITE ALERT!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Oh, goody lordly. And now, where all that hydrogen is going to come from? From dwindling natural gas supplies (unless everyone is fitted with a methane collector and fed 5 kg of burritos every day)? Or from water electrolyzed with electricity coming from coal fired or nuclear power plants???

You asked the energency density of water?

[CFD339]

..African, or European?

Actually, the problem with water as a storage is all that damn extra oxygen in there. Most of the mass in fact is oxygen, not hydrogen. True, oxygen is also combustable -- I wonder why they don't use both the hydrogen and the oxygen from water.

Oh well.

Re:You asked the energency density of water?

[bani]

NASA uses both the hydrogen and oxygen. And gosh darn it, they use the water generated too :D

Re:You asked the energency density of water?

[Alsee]

oxygen is also combustable

That's it! The solution to the world fuel problem! We'll convert the earth's atmosphere to pure flourine and we'll burn oxygen as fuel!

-

About fuel consumption

[kumahdus]

The pellets exceed all criteria set by the US Department of Energy for 2015, enabling a car to drive more than 500 km on a 50 L tank (13 MJ/l)

Call me stupid, but I don't get this. Why does the US Department of Energy want to increase energy consumption by 2015?
Because, that's what it is (if I read this correctly): consuming maximum of 50 l of fuel to get as far as minimum of 500 km. Ok, of course I understand they really don't mean to increase consumption. But I don't understand their criteria.

My old'n'trusty Renault 19 goes circa 650 km with full tank (mixed drive) and even further on highway. Compared to this 50 l task my car should go circa 710 km. Heck, the car is 15 years old!

So given this, I think more realistic value should be like going 3000 km on 50 l (for another comparison: some regular HDi cars of today can make more than 1250 km on 50 l tank)

Please explain me what did I understand wrong here? Or is it the US Department of Energy to be laughed at? Or is it something else I missed completely?

And yes, this is a bit of troll, because if I understood the issue correctly, there sure is something wrong in the department mentioned before... ;-)

kuma

And missing would be

[WindBourne]

1. the efficiency of getting increasingly harder oil from the ground.
2. The efficiency of refining the oil.
3. The high cost of maintence of an internal combustion engine.
4. The very low efficiency of getting the CO2 out of the air.

Re:And missing would be

[Anonymous Coward]

The very low efficiency of getting the CO2 out of the air.

You're right. Trees and plants are very inefficient.

Re:And missing would be

[GuyWithLag]

Yes, they are. There's just billions of tons of plant life...

Re:And missing would be

[Hard_Code]

Yeah, the situation changes a lot when you change the timescale. Fossil fuels are finite (and if they are not "finite" they are at least naturally renewable in vanishingly small amounts), so after you use your last drop, the fancy equation demonstrating efficiency becomes useless. *When* they run out we'll have to do *something*, so it is a little gratuitous to argue against the efficiency of the alternatives.

Re:And missing would be

[tgeller]

1. the efficiency of getting increasingly harder oil from the ground.
2. The efficiency of refining the oil.
3. The high cost of maintence of an internal combustion engine.
   
   
4. PROFIT!
   
   
5. The very low efficiency of getting the CO2 out of the air.

I couldn't resist. :)

Re:And missing would be

[WindBourne]

You apparently missed the study that shows they do not increase their uptake in CO2. Apparently, it would be like using humans to directly get water out of NOLA. Just because there is more water, does not mean that we will drink more. So instead we are pumping it out.

Re:And missing would be

[WindBourne]

And I would rather not get rid of the cheap oil. It is used in more than just driving a car and generating electriciy. It is used in plastics, and other manufactuering processes. It would be nice it future generations have cheap plastics.

Re:And missing would be

[umbrellasd]

4. The very low efficieny of getting the CO2 out of the air. Insert tree seed into ground.

Re:And missing would be

[Lord Apathy]

Ignoring studies that say this doesn't work, but planting trees doesn't remove CO2 from the biosphere. All it does it put the CO2 into the tree for temporary storage. Once the tree dies the CO2 is free to rejoin the environment.

The key the CO2 problem is to remove it from the biosphere. It has be locked up into something long term like limestone.

Note, I'm making this up on the spot, please feel free to point out I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

Re:And missing would be

[Dyolf Knip]

Soybeans, hemp, and a few other plants can be processed into reasonable plastic facsimilies (industrial plastics are a bit harder). Remove oil from transportation, power, fertilizer, and low-grade plastics, and we could very likely synthesize enough hydrocarbons for everything else we use them for.

Q: Re:Power

[JonTurner]

Can J. Robert Oppenhiemer claim prior art on multi-car pileups?

boom

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me see, ultra fine particles of aluminum, and fire, Sounds fun to me lets go for a ride.

Not if you still have the same period for fill-up

[SuperKendall]

If you get about the same milage per "tank" (maximum pellet capacity) then gas stations will stick around - as currently they are spaced to offer fuel at convienient intervals when driving.

Also, the volume required to really serve everyones needs would I think preclude selling fuel only at other locations like grocery stores. Gas stations could stil move a lot of pellets, though I would think they might have storage issues unless they convert underground tanks into pellet storage cellars.

Perhaps not...

[Gadgetfreak]

but that doesn't mean there aren't any other environmental effects. Burning fossil fuels also creates water, so the difference from switching to something else isn't likely to make a huge difference, but increasing the humidity can have an adverse local effect on the environment. I just suppose it depends on how much.

Re:Perhaps not...

[ramk13]

The amount of water already in the air and water released by natural evaporation absolutely dwarfs the amount of water released through combustion. Should we start covering up lakes too? On top of that the environmental impact of humidity change is insignificant compared to the impact of all the other compounds released in combustion.

Re:Perhaps not...

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount of water already in the air and water released by natural evaporation absolutely dwarfs the amount of water released through combustion. Should we start covering up lakes too?

The amount of CO2 released by geothermal activity dwarfs industrial output. Should we plug up volcanoes?

Re:Perhaps not...

[Kazymyr]

Lakes? How about covering oceans. LOL The amount of water released from hydrogen burning if all the cars in the world were converted to it would be probably 1/1,000,000 of the total evaporation from oceans and other open water surfaces.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[malex23]

People who want the car to be less central to American society do so because cars are wasteful, pollutive, and there ought to be more alternatives available... not because they "hate our freedom."

Unless you can provide a quote from this "sub-culture" where they specifically say that they're against clean energy, I must conclude that you are either having paranoid delusions or a troll.

(PS... you can keep "praying" for clean and cheap energy. I'll fund it. We'll see who gets a hydrogen pellet first)

hardware? :S

[alyflex]

can anyone tell me why this is a hardware news and not a science news?

Ground oil isn't the only source of hyrdrocarbons

[snowwrestler]

"Hydrocarbons" pretty much describes any organic matter. Corn is chock full of hydrocarbons. As is human sewage. As is natural gas.

Why hydrogen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we playing with Hydrogen? Hydrogen waste more energy, and only a little amount are produced that Hydrogen is just a waste of our time(I am talking full cycle). Why not use corn, olive, or any organic oil that can be farmed, and reproduced.

500 km on a 50 L tank? Bah!

[jlcooke]

I got 1,100 km on my 55L tank just this weekend. What's the trick?

Diesel. Jetta. And my fuel was 30% cheaper than regular unleaded. And I filled up with 20% Bio-Diesel blend before my trip.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[hey]

Is the current situation really so great?! Eg driving on a freeway from your free-standing house to the huge parking lot at a Wal-Mart. Yuck.

How about walking from a town-house to a local hardware store where the guy knows you to buy that hammer. Nice.

Re:Ground oil isn't the only source of hyrdrocarbo

[KarmaMB84]

Ppossibly the US's massive coal reserves. We could already be making it into fuel for cars just like South Africa, but the green people seem to get more pissed off at coal than every other fuel combined.

This is still 3 times less than gasoline.

[jacekm]

Web site lists 13 MJ/l for the storage. This is still pretty poor when compared to the good old gasoline (or diesel). In oil based fuels energy density is just about 34 MJ/l. I wonder, what car they were using than can get 500 km from 50 liters of such a low density stuff. On gasoline (or diesel) such car would go 1300 km from the same fuel tank (assuming similar efficiency of the diesel engine and fuel cell especially when one will take into account all the energy needed to extract the hydrogen from the stuff). That calculates roughly to 3.8 l/100 km. If we assume much more realistic 8 l/100 km for a typical mid size passenger car normally used in the city, suddenly you can only go 625 km on a gasoline and just miserable 240 km on the hydrogen pellets which is not that far off from today's battery driven electric cars that GM used to build and sell several years ago. Another problem is that the stuff is solid! Why is this supposed to be an advantage? Solid fuels require significantly more expensive and cumbersome delivery and refueling infrastructure. It's easy to send liquids over the long distances at low cost using pipelines. Storage tanks, barrels and liquid containers are simple and inexpensive. Pumping liquids is fast, uses relatively inexpensive pumps and hoses/pipes that scale well to different needs and sizes. Imagine all the devices needed to handle small, customer size and large and heavy industrial size amounts of solid stuff even in the powder form. This will require myriad of devices to distribute medium and small amounts of the stuff to the final consumer. Not mentioning that the solid stuff delivery devices do not scale well with the variable load. If the system is build to deliver large amounts of solid product, it becomes very inefficient when the required delivery volume falls to some smaller amounts at times. It's easy to quickly and efficiently significantly vary amounts of stuff send through the pipeline; it is more difficult to do so efficiently with solid type materials. Use your imagination and try to envision devices needed to quickly and efficiently remove 50 kg of used solid pellets from the fuel tank located somewhere in the middle of the vehicle under the trunk and replace it with fresh load of 50 kg new pellets in the same tank. Those devices suppose to be quick, efficient and very durable. They should be safe and simple to operate by the inexperienced, untrained person. They should resist exposure to elements and lack of maintenance/service over long periods of time (think rural gas stations in poor neighborhoods). They should work as expected when exposed to either +50 or -50 degrees Celsius. They should prevent any leakage of the transferred solid fuel to the environment. It's not that simple to replace good old fuel pump at the local gas station. Besides all this the web page does not mention, how long it takes to charge the stuff with fresh hydrogen? Is there any toxic product in the process either required to produce the stuff or even made during the process of hydrogen extraction that can be considered waste? How much energy is needed just to charge the pellet and later to extract the hydrogen back from it etc? And of course, not by fault of the company that developed the stuff, the main question that is missing from the whole hydrogen economy hype is where and at what energy cost the free hydrogen supposes to come from in the quantities required by the society transportation needs. JM

Actually, these pellets...

[Anonymous Coward]

are the size of a beach ball. The only thing really holding this technology up is trying to get them into the fuel tank.

Re:Actually, these pellets...

[CyricZ]

If they are that size, then it is incorrect to refer to them as "pellets". A better term would be "ball" or "chunk".

Ammonia, not so bad...

[absolutlactam]

These pellets, from what I've read, keep the hydrogen stored in the form of ammonia. Ammonia is manufactured on a vast, large scale (think of your p0rn collection) via the Haber process, developed back in WW1 (yes, one, not two). Now, the process still requires nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas. While nitrogen gas is cheap (buying liquid N2 is cheaper than water by the truckload, ask any university), the hydrogen will still be an issue. Hopefully, the newest and best developments in the world of chemistry and physics (I'm thinking the new solar panels with no lead sulfide, and the high surface area graphite electrodes) will allow us to do the electrolysis of water without incurring as much difficulty as in the past. (anyone got any idea on the lifetime of solar panels?)

Obligatory Simpsons...

[pulse2600]

The pellets are supposedly around $10-15 each, and each pellet can provide roughly the equivalent of 1 gallon of gas. With fuel prices so high, how are we going to pay for it?

"I have this credit card. It's called a hose and a breath mint."

Re:How does it come out? - France

[KarmaBlackballed]

Note: The US has ZERO modern designs in operation -- we still use highly dangerous designs from the 50's and 60's

This is not the case in France and a few other countries. They could easily leverage existing nuclear plants to produce hydrogen for themselves and for export. Perhaps the US does not need new nuclear plants as long as Americans are willing to import the hydrogen like is done with oil today.

dupes, thats why

[willCode4Beer.com]

By running a meaningless story today, eveyone can complain about a dupe when the real one comes out thus, preventing any meaninful discussion of the implementation details.

Re:dupes, thats why

[Red Flayer]

Please see original post in this thread. I mention it there...

Hydrogen and petroleum

[N3wsByt3]

"It's not all bad - you can make hydrogen from any power source, so you can have a fully environment-friendly hydroelectric hydrogen generator. However, that's less efficient than burning up petroleum to make the hydrogen, so for the moment hydrogen is worse for the environment than simply burning fuel;[...]"

Huh? You lost me, there. what do you mean, it is 'less efficient'? Do you mean in an economical sense? That would depend entirely on the costs of both systems involved, in a given area. In fact, it's rather comparing apples with oranges. If you compare the energy-efficiency in theorethic output per kg of material on itself, then fission (nuclear energy) beats them all (untill fusionreactors will pop up).

Since you correctly indicated that any powersource will do, fission or fusionreactors would be viable candidates too, and would be more efficient then using petroleum (aside from the giant environmental advantages).

You are, ofcourse, correct that, if the hydrogen is created by using systems which burn petroleum in the first place, there is no real advantage (exept maybe in a 'the-cities-are-full-of-clean-cars' local way).

Power Pellets

[bar-agent]

Power Pellets!

Wakka-wakka-wakka-wakka

LOL

[SatanicPuppy]

*Sound of brains asploding*

We better just tell them they're "Magic Pellets"

Don't forget to add

[UnapprovedThought]

1. The gruesome inefficiency of shale and other sources people are turning to
2. The fuel lost while trucking fuel around (versus generating it locally)
3. The fuel lost by spills due to the need to store it, truck it, ship it and pipeline it
4. The impact of environmental degradation and cost of restoration (est. $400 trillion)
5. The cost of wars and political distortions due to resource conflicts
6. The fact that the atmosphere is not an infinite CO2 sink and so eventually the efficiency of burning hydrocarbons will degrade noticeably

Re:Don't forget to add

[Anonymous Coward]

7. PROFIT

er... wrong list...

Re:Don't forget to add

[WindBourne]

Shale may not be so bad. Here in Colorado, they have come up with a new way to do it. Basically, they cook it out. That will free up the light stuff and natural gas. While that sounds inefficient, it may not be. One aspect of this, is to use wind and solar to do the heating. In fact, this could be much more efficient than trying to get oil from the run-down wells in Texas or in the gulf. In addition, it is possible that this could be less environmentally damaging if done right.

Of course, that does not solve the other issues( shipping, war, CO2, etc).

Re:Don't forget to add

[UnapprovedThought]

Shale may not be so bad. Here in Colorado...

Actually, I think this process was first tried in some other state (Utah?), and only now reported in Colorado. But, Colorado's got the biggest reserves. It seems to involve turning a chunk of land into a temporary refinery, and, as you say, heating it so as to extract the product, in situ. They are claiming low extraction costs, but without more details I cannot confirm whether this reflects reality. Let's just say I'm a little bit suspicious due to the amount of material that must be heated, and the length of time it must be kept hot to extract anything.

Of course, that does not solve the other issues

Well, at least with this one we won't be trying to invade ourselves any time soon. :) Then again, if we did need to have a war against it, what would be the title? I guess "War on Boxes of Rocks" sort of has a ring to it.

How do we get the Hydrogen?

[aqk]

Well... Do we plan on getting it from a hydrogen well?
Hmmmnn..
Gosh! Someone told me there's a lot of it in water! We can just get it from that!
There- THAT was simple!

Re:How do we get the Hydrogen?

[kylegordon]

The cost of electrolysis is ever so slightly more than the potential sale price of the products.

Re:How do we get the Hydrogen?

[aqk]

Ever so Slightly more...
And it will continue to be so, except for the followers of P.T.Barnum

urinate in the fuel tank

[willCode4Beer.com]

Seems in days of old chemists got ammonia by extracing it from urine.
So, now you'll be able to fuel up your car by eating lots of protein, drinking lots of water, and mounting a toilet to your car.

"The future is disgusting" - Fry

"the extraction of hydrogen is relatively easy"

[Lost Penguin]

I would not want to be close to anything using relativity and Hydrogen.....

Old hat

[HermanAB]

Storing H2 bound to other schtuff in pellets is really a very old idea. The problem is the weight of the gas tank, so why is this idea being warmed over (pun intended) again?

Re:Ground oil isn't the only source of hyrdrocarbo

[AndersOSU]

If we could easily, ecomomically, and commercially get energy out of any organic matter we wouldn't have a problem. The reason I said that hydrocarbons means foriegn oil is that oil has loosely bound hydrogen, which can be stripped and collected without too much effort.

In order to get energy out of Corn you have to grow it, ferment it, then strip the hydrogen. This isn't an economical solution. If you skip the hydrogen stripping step you have the process for creating ethanol, and that isn't a economically viable solution. The energy balance just doesn't work out.

In order to get hydrogen out of human sewage you have to ferment it, and strip it. This means you have to handle lots of human waste, which is a problem. Issues like containment, processing, and just having giant vats of fermenting crap make this solution impractical, although slightly less so than corn.

Natural gas suffers the same flaws of foriegn oil, with the added bonus of more volatile prices.

So hydrocarbons==oil for any purpose other than chemisty.

Maybe 80 years ago...

[RingDev]

burning crushed coal with out environmental controls (ie: the same way they burnt coal 120 years ago) is worse then automobiles with modern emission controls. duh.

New processes like Gasification of coal allow it to be burnt significantly cleaner, with significantly less water consumption and a much lower amount of mecury released. Tack onto that the ease and economy of scale to impliment carbon scrubbers, filters, and new technology on a few hundred massive coal burning plants across the US as opposed to hundreds of millions of cars.

Also, environmentally sound or not, the US demands a lot of power. The US also has the largest coal reserves in the world. Currently, with the rising cost of crude oil and natural gas, coal is not going to go away. Technology continues to improve it's performance and emmissions, and running coal plants at night to generate hydrogen will allow the plants to maintain a constant load and reduce wastes (ie: worthless emissions).

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for green power. I would love to get building codes updated to require all new residential buildings in a class 3 or better solar area to have integrated solar roofing for power or water heating. Integrated roofing won't replace the existing power grid, but it will greatly reduce the demand for growth. I'm also a big pro-ponent of wind. Did you know that the state of Nebraska has enough wind power potential to power the entire western half of the united states? But they have crap for an infrastructure, it would cost so much to put the system in place, that there is no realistic profit margin over the forseeable future. If/When coal costs rise, Nebraska wind may become a much more viable option. Also, Nuclear power has it's advantages, but it's got an engineering problem, and it's a growing problem. We need to solve the nuclear waste problem, whether it's reprocessing, deep sea burrial, or centralised uninhabited burried storage, before we can reinvest in the nuclear solution.

-Rick

Re:Maybe 80 years ago...

[Jeremi]

But they have crap for an infrastructure, it would cost so much to put the system in place, that there is no realistic profit margin over the forseeable future.

Funny how that logic never seems to stop the nuclear power or ethanol industries... ;^)

Re:Maybe 80 years ago...

[RingDev]

"Funny how that logic never seems to stop the nuclear power or ethanol industries... ;^)"

Err, it did stop Nuclear power growth. The cost of dealing with Nuclear waste is so high that the US hasn't built a new nuclear power plant in what, almost 20 years now? I think we have just 'restarted' construction of 3 or 4 plants that had never been completed back in the 70's though.

As for ethanol... it's a complete waste. If organic fuel is your goal, soy diesle is a much better route. Corn requires HUGE amounts of nitrogen rich fertalizer. Which means using chemical (petrolium) based fertalizers. Corn has plenty of other issues to, but I'm no agronomist. Soy on the other hand, produces its own nitrogen, is significantly more hardy, and can also be used as livestock feed after the oil has been removed. Diesle engines are also more efficient, and with current emission control standards, less polluting the their gas equivilants.

-Rick

Re:Maybe 80 years ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that why several power companies in the US abandoned nuclear facilities mid-construction due to the cost from the governments regulations?

Re:Maybe 80 years ago...

[Stephan Schulz]

Diesle engines are also more efficient,...

The engine (and the fuel) is named after Rudolf Diesel, the inventor. Even we snotty Europeans spell it with "el" at the end ;-)

Re:Maybe 80 years ago...

[aminorex]

Cellulosic ethanol from hemp kicks soya desiels' sooty booty.

Re:Maybe 80 years ago...

[RingDev]

Actually, you snotty Europeans have a lot more experience with Diesels. And thanks for the correction, I've been misspelling Diesel like a 3rd grade dislexic moron for years with out even knowing it.

I was actually considering swaping out my Fiero's 3.4l v6 gas engine for a 3.9l i4 izuzu diesel engine. The 3.9l has a redline (max rpms) of about 2800-3000 with horse power in the low 100 range. But it also has 285ft/lbs of torque at 1800 rpms. That means with a manual tranny, over drive, and highway gears, you can pull 80mph at about 2200 rpms. Vs the 3500-4000rpm I have to spin my current engine/tranny at to hit 80mph.

-Rick

Re:Maybe 80 years ago...

[RingDev]

Unfortunatly, due to some amazing social-political manuevering by capitalists in the mid 1900's, growing canibis, whether for hemp or smoke is illegal in the US.

-Rick

Re:Maybe 80 years ago...

[Phronesis]

New processes like Gasification of coal allow it to be burnt significantly cleaner, with significantly less water consumption and a much lower amount of mecury released. Tack onto that the ease and economy of scale to impliment carbon scrubbers, filters, and new technology on a few hundred massive coal burning plants across the US as opposed to hundreds of millions of cars.

No coal fired plants have carbon scrubbers and there's no plan to install them any time soon because carbon sequestration does not exist and will not exist for decades. Until it does, burning gasoline will be much more greenhouse-friendly than burning coal.

Current coal technology (not talking about 150 years ago) is very dirty. That's why there's all the controversy over the President's "Clear Skies Act."

I'd love to see wind developed.

I'd also love to see coal cleaned up.

In the meantime it would be much more environmentally friendly to let cars continue to burn relatively clean gasoline and focus on cleaning up the hundreds of dirty coal plants that are currently generating electricity for the grid. That would get you much more environmental benefit than worrying about hydrogen cars.

After you have cleaned up the coal-fired electric plants then we can think about hydrogen cars.

Re:Maybe 80 years ago...

[RingDev]

Wisconsin is currently trying to replace to coal furnaces at the milwaukee coal processing power plant. I say trying because even though it passed budget and WI regulations, the state of Illinois (80 miles down wind) has banned to building of new coal processing plants with out gasification and extra emission controls. The states of Illinois and Michigan are sueing the state of Wisconsin to prevent the construction of the plant with out the new more environmentally friendly controls. Over 100 other new coal plants are pivoting on the outcome of this trial. If Wisconsin wins, more cheap and some what dirty factories will be created. If Illinois wins (Michigan's lawsuit is based on Mercury released in the lake) It could give other down wind states more power to fight upwind states poluting. That is also part of the polution bill that braniac bush signed. Not that I'm a fan of his, but just about any environmental concerns coming from him is a step in the right direction.

There are also other states that have significantly tighter restrictions on power plant emissions, just look at California! It's not like they ratchette down on the auto industry and leave the power industry unaccounted. Numerous other states are looking at doing the same, including Oregon, Washington, and Mass if I remember correctly.

-Rick

Using Bacteria, That's How

[Makarakalax]

Within 10 years (my estimate), we'll have genetically modified bacteria that break hydrogens off saturated fats from garbarge, and produce large quantities of cooking oil and hydrogen gas.

Thus we will make a hydrogen economy viable using solar power with the intermediaries of agriculture, the dinner table, the dustman and GM-bacteria.

beat them to it ?

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like somebody has made a bit more progress. http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/

Re:Forget Greenhouse gas. It's the HEAT!

[aqk]

It's the HEAT, dummy! Currently it takes a LOT of energy to make Hydrogen through electrolysis. All this lost energy shows up as heat in our atmoshpere, not to mention the heat generated from the Nuclear Power plants.
In any event, most hydrogen is currently made from the reformation of methane. And that methane really has to want to reform. More heat.
And when it's pointed out that the reformation of methane produces a LOT of CO2 (a greenhouse gas), not to mention more heat, everyone seems to mumble "uhhh.. we'll sequester the CO2. Yes, let's sequester it..."

My god! Negative energy!

[N3wsByt3]

"50% conversion efficiency of fuel energy to electricity in large power plant.
66% conversion efficiency of electrolysis to make hydrogen.
66% conversion efficiency of making electricity in fuel cell.
95% conversion efficiency of electricity to motive power.
35% conversion efficiency of internal combustion to motive power."

So, when I finally want to drive my car, it is 50 + 66 + 66 + 95 + 35 = 312% of inefficiency! My God! My Car will drive backwards at more then three times the normal speed!!

Re:My god! Negative energy!

[FiReaNGeL]

I hope you're not serious, or that you're 6 years old and will have your first math class next year.

Re:My god! Negative energy!

[N3wsByt3]

"I hope you're not serious[...]"

Heh. And I'm hoping you are kidding with that statement.

I mean, c'mon; people don't have *THAT* a low standard on /. Well, most people, anyway.

Besides...I'm from Europe. ;-)

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[wheelbarrow]

Your vision does sound nice for people who voluntarily choose it. Your way of life seems fine, just don't use tyranny to force me to adopt it.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[wheelbarrow]

You say cars are wasteful. Please answer this question: Is it OK with you if I make the free and voluntary choice on a Saturday morning to put my kids in the car and drive 40 miles to the zoo?

Re:Hold on, more info in the summary than the arti

[Cruciform]

Exactly, it's a Slashvertisement.

Wonder if getting a post on here drums up investors.

How much energy

[n6kuy]

...does it take to get the hydrogen from wherever they get it, and then bind it into pellets, then extract it back out for actual use?

I'm betting it's more than the amount of energy the hydrogen itself will provide.

OK, so they didn't say it was *cheap* energy, just safe energy...

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, currently the highway/suburbia/walmart lifestyle is forced on me -- there is no public transport to my place of work, despite the fact that it is located adjacent to some rail tracks (which are used for cargo only). I am not an utopianist, but I think people who want to live in a free standing house which can only be reached by car should have to pay whatever it *really* costs (and that includes some compensation (if that could be called compensation at all) for the amount of forests/wildlands etc that is detroyed).
There is nothing more depressing than living in a big house in suburbia with trees in your garden, but if you want to go for a walk, you need to drive for an hour to find a place where you can walk for more than 10 min before hitting the next subdivision again.

IANAL, but...

[gg3po]

...I've done a little research into this and think I may just have stumbled upon some prior art that would invalidate their patent.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[codeshack]

"Your view sounds nice, but don't use tyranny to force me to adopt it."

Oh, okay. But don't build any freeways through my nice, pedestrian neighborh -- oh no, you already did!

Let's all take a moment to shed a tear for the American car culture, the freedom to live in ugly-ass subdivisions, and paving the entire universe. They were beautiful concepts.

(And I *like* driving. One of my favorite things to do. But it should be for trips and oddjobs, not commuting and getting basic essentials. Hoorah fuel efficiency but hoorah intelligent city planning.)

Subsidies

[snowwrestler]

The reason I mentioned corn, sewage, and natural gas is that right now all three are receiving significant public funding in the U.S. In the U.S. at least it doesn't matter how chemically inefficient something is, someone will do it if they can make money at it. It's a lot easier to make money when your raw materials are heavily subsidized...witness the continued success of the timber and cattle industries. Ethanol is not currently an economically viable solution because it is burned in an internal combustion engine and it competes against cheap gas. Under that paradigm burning hydrogen doesn't make any sense either. But using it in a fuel cell, competing with very expensive gas, might.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[oGMo]

They harbor a social agenda to force you to live your life on their terms. They see the rising costs and pollution from fossile fuels as a lever for gaining the control they need to remake society against most people's free will.

And some people on slashdot are paranoid, but I wouldn't know anyone like that...

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[Scarblac]

Sure, if you also pay for all the associated costs.

Cleanup costs of pollution should be factored into the price of fuel, the car etc.

Re:Ground oil isn't the only source of hyrdrocarbo

[Jeremi]

but the green people seem to get more pissed off at coal than every other fuel combined

And for good reason. Coal is the dirtiest fuel around from a global-warming perspective. Cheap coal energy isn't so cheap anymore if you have to factor in the cost of crop failure, massive flooding, etc.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ you are a douchebag.

So why, in this purely hypothetical "utopian" (/tyrannical) society, couldn't you use the new, super-efficient, non-polluting public transportation system to go to the fucking zoo?

Just shut the hell up, please.

Water polution

[MythoBeast]

Ok, so let's assume that we can all start driving hydrogen based cars now. The burning of hydrogen produces something like nine times its mass in water. This would mean that a crowded road would become hot and humid like the inside of a bathroom when you take a hot shower.

Water vapor isn't like CO2, CO, or other petroleum, it isn't naturally a gas at room temperature. It naturally precipitates out on any cooler surface. So much for road-side newspaper stands, right? Waterproof briefcases and backpacks would become popular. Anyone walking along side the road could wind up drenched.

In case you didn't know it, water is pretty much a universal solvent. Anything near the road would suffer corrosion as if it were under water, although a little slower. Previously safe posters and billboards would have to become plasticized. As petroleum based cars became scarce, the oil that protects our roads from rain would dry up, and the water would quickly destroy most surfaces.

On the good side of this, the road side would suddenly become a very popular place for vegitation to grow. It would be like that spot along the riverside where the grass grows so tall. Imagine wanting to put your garden CLOSER to the street!

Let's talk about days where the temperature is below freezing. All of the storefronts on a popular road would accumulate a thick coating of frost. The heat of the passing cars would keep it liquid until traffic died down, then it would turn to as sheet of ice. Lightly traveled roads would accumulate a perpetual sheen. Traveling on the highways in late evening would become outright dangerous.

Ok, so maybe I'm engaging in a little bit of doomsaying. We're so enthused about getting rid of our old problems, though, that we don't seem to be even thinking about the new problems that this would cause.

Re:Water polution

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Very Good concept point, but your specific illustrations are somewhat silly. Any questions, move to Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, or Oswego.

a) It rains every damned day
b) If it isn't raining, it's snowing
c) If it isn't snowing, existing snow is drifting
d) Most places don't bother to plow unless there's a *good* chance that the town supervisor's wife's SUV will get stuck. And then he'll only order the plowing if he thinks her cellphone battery is charged.
e) The major roads and intersections are salted or sanded, making ice irrelevent. Minor roads are not, making the surface a brittle snow-pack ice in the first place.

Like I said, your point of not considering impacts is well taken - but your specific examples are "normal" existence around here. Nobody's ever noticed, nobody's ever cared, and quite frankly it's never mattered. At all. Your ideas make for some interesting irrigation techniques in the more arid regions, though... :)

Re:Water polution

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Ok, so let's assume that we can all start driving hydrogen based cars now. The burning of hydrogen produces something like nine times its mass in water. This would mean that a crowded road would become hot and humid like the inside of a bathroom when you take a hot shower.

Do you realize that cars right now produce mostly water vapor?

As petroleum based cars became scarce, the oil that protects our roads from rain would dry up, and the water would quickly destroy most surfaces.

Um, what?! The oil that covers roads is washed away every time it rains. That's why wet roads are more dangerous after a week of dry weather.

Re:Water polution

[MythoBeast]

Um, what?! The oil that covers roads is washed away every time it rains. That's why wet roads are more dangerous after a week of dry weather.

Half true. The roads are more dangerous when it rains after a week of dry weather because the lighter oils float to the top of the water, making an oil slick.

The heavier oils and waxes create a barrier that keep the water out.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[wheelbarrow]

What if I do not wish to for a variety of reasons? Am I free to choose, for my own reasons, my private car instead of public transportation?

no worries

[halfelven]

Don't worry, when oil dries up, nobody will question the efficiency of using hydrogen as an energy carrier. Just build a whole lotta nukes, so that electricity (and energy in general) is cheap enough, and we're all set.

Now, the problem is, how the heck are we going to build enough nukes in due time?...

Re:no worries

[Dyolf Knip]

Typical NIMBY FUD.

First off, the amount of toxic waste produced by a fission plant is miniscule compared to what coal plants have been putting out for decades. Something like 150,000 tons of uranium alone burned into the atmosphere since the 30's from coal. Nice, huh?

Secondly, the worst of the nuclear waste can be reprocessed into ... more fuel! Only thing keeping it from happening are pointless regulations passed by anti-nuclear FUDsters.

Thirdly, what waste remains (usually just equipment and consumables exposed to radiation) is easily bound into a nice, neat package which can be dumped into a continental subduction zone and will not be seen until it resurfaces harmlessly a billion years from now.

If I had to choose between a coal plant that'll spew heavy metals into the air, an oil/gas plant that'll become prohibitively expensive to fuel in a few years, a hydro plant that can't be built within 300 miles (not many dammable rivers in Florida), a solar plant that is unreliable on cloudy days, or a nuclear plant that can fuel itself with elements only slightly less common than lead and package all it's waste into bundles for safe disposal, I'll take the fission plant any day.

Re:Ground oil isn't the only source of hyrdrocarbo

[Anomylous Howard]

"....but the green people seem to get more pissed off at coal than every other fuel combined."

It's not just the Green People, it's the People With Lungs, and the Water Drinkers who get pissed off. If you can get enough of the hydrogen out of coal, without burning it, and do it cheaply, we'd be a lot less pissed.

Waste of research money

[kahrytan]

Hydrogen is already safe. 1; It takes more heat to ignite Hydrogen then it does Gasoline. 2; When hydrogen tanks in cars are punctured the hydrogen expansion is rapid and quick, making any ignition rather impossible. 3; When hydrogen is ignited, it burns very quickly and gives off little heat. If you don't believe me, Google hydrogen.

Re:Waste of research money

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Kahrytan, it appears that you've never fought a car fire. It also appears that you dunno wtf you're talking about, at all, and that you do not know how to use google, at all. We have a word for you in the fire service. We call you "NIOSH Food" (aka dead from arrogance, hopefully you don't take out your crew along with you).

a) Magnesium is hard to ignite. So are tires. Still, they burn. Hydrogen is quite easy to ignite by comparison.
b) Both magnesium and tires, as well as the upholstry inside the vehical and the plastics in the body, trunk and engine compartments are each more than hot enough to ignite hydrogen. So are electric sparks from downed powerlines and shorted battery cables.
c) True, you won't find many cars with magnesium any more, and hopefully it'll stay that way. You will continue to find tires and upholstry, however, along with a more and more other plastics.
d) Hindinberg pretty much calls into question every statement you've made regarding expansion rates and ignitability.
e) "Little Heat" - 2400 calories per gram per degree to convert from steam to liquid or vice-versa. That is an ASSLOAD of heat. And that's just a secondary reaction that happens to the byproduct later on, not the primary one that'll drive the car.
f) No heat means no pressure to drive a reciprocating engine. Bullshit. To force a piston down, you need pressure. Pressure is heat as far as that's concerned, clearly it is present. Period.

In the future, I'd suggest you do a little study of firematics and hazmat prior to making such statements. Here is a good starting point.

Re:Waste of research money

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Hindinberg pretty much calls into question every statement you've made regarding expansion rates and ignitability.

How so? Hindenberg burned the way it did because they covered it in thermite.

Re:Waste of research money

[chez69]

don't let the facts get in the way

Re:Waste of research money

[SmurfButcher Bob]

I've followed that debate, and it's moot in this case. Either way the hydrogen burned, and it burned quite well.

Re:500 km on a 50 L tank? Bah!

[mchappee]

" I got 1,100 km on my 55L tank just this weekend. What's the trick? Diesel. Jetta. And my fuel was 30% cheaper than regular unleaded. And I filled up with 20% Bio-Diesel blend before my trip."

...and how many pounds of pollution did you put into the atmosphere? If the answer is nonzero then you missed the point.

Matthew

Re:The utopianists...

[Mr. Mikey]

Can you give me any reason to believe that these "utopianists" exist anywhere besides within your own imagination? Your claims are the first time I've seen any sign of any such phenomena.

"Nobody will have their own free standing home and nobody will have the freedom to choose to drive their own car, on their own terms, whenever and wherever they like."

Do we have sufficient real estate and energy sources such that each and every person on the planet can have a free standing home, and drive whenver and wherever they want? If not, then who gets a slice of that limited pie?

I'm guessing that you are assuming that you, of course, will be one of the lucky ones. It's what I call the Libertarian Conceit: "Yes, our proposed economic system will result in a dog eat dog, king of the hill world, but I'm better than the rest of you, so I, of course, will end up the King of the Mountain... and the rest of you can go to hell for all I care."

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I beg to differ;

[Biotech9]

alternate energy sources certainly merit investment we are a looong way from being able to produce anywhere near the energy needed to supply millions of autos with hydrogen.

Or at the very minimum, Denmark and Germany. Both of which have huge amounts of energy produced by wind. Not only that, the EU has already made mandates to set-up a 5,000 Mega watt wind farm off shore in EU waters by 2015. Each turbine will produce 5 Megawatts, that is a hell of a lot of energy to come from one machine. More importantly, they are huge investment in future technology, already Denmark supplies 20% of it's own electricity from wind farms.

Check out a picture of just ONE of the blades here.

Yes, it's still in it's infancy, but it's certainly not a whacky implausible alternative, as the Danes have clearly shown. If every country invested in their own wind/solar/wave sources with as much gusto as Denmark, the world would be a hell of a lot cleaner.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[gladed]

Thanks, wheelbarrow! Before reading your message I hadn't realized that people who advocate bicycles as a means of locomotion are evil, and want to steal my house, and force me to live in a shoebox, and require me to get a hall pass to go potty. I promise to run over a couple of them on my way home from work today.

Wait a minute. _I_ rode my bike to work today. And I have my own free-standing home! Living in this kind of self-contradiction is torture. I will have to go shoot myself now.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[The New Stan Price]

It's called New York City. If you like that lifestyle then go live there. How about a free standing house with lots of land? One size does not fit all.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[Anonymous Coward]

" There is a definite sub-culture of folks out there, many of whom play on SlashDot, that do not want to see any sort of cheap and clean alternative to fossil fuels. These are the same people who say things like "we've got to get people out of their cars"."

"These folks are utopianists. They harbor a social agenda to force you to live your life on their terms."

No, rationalists. As in: until replacement technologies are demonstrably practical, it makes no sense to guzzle the cheap stuff quickly. It's not about control, it is about trying to wake people up to the fact that if they like the lifestyle they have now, and think their children should enjoy the same, they should consider whether it is wise to gamble the future on technologies that might not come to fruition in time. Maybe they should consider cutting back a little until the prospect of a replacement is clearly in sight. Conservation is cheap and technologically simple compared to deploying major alternatives. The more we conserve, the more time we will have to make the switch. The more we burn now, the faster a serious crisis could loom.

Such a change in attitude is not about forcing people to transform their behaviour, it is about asking people to take some small and easy steps now (like choosing to drive a more efficient vehicle) rather than being backed into a desperate corner sooner than we are prepared to deal with it.

If you want to be reckless, go right ahead. It's your priviledge in a free society, and a luxury we can afford right now. But please don't cast anyone who opposes that choice, and offers an alternative, as if they were a some kind of nutty, oppressive utopian. I *want* people to be able to choose what they do, I'm just worried it isn't sustainable, and wondering what to do next. The reality is, if we don't make the transition from fossil fuels smoothly, we will *all* be forced to live on whatever terms the remaining resources and the laws of physics permit. It will become involuntary not because of politics, but because there is no other way. Why approach a hard wall at such a high speed until we are really sure there is a door through it, and that we can swerve through it gracefully?

People who ask for moderation are not opposed to choice -- just the opposite. They are saying: please choose wisely now or we eventually won't have a choice anymore. They want to preserve choice as long as possible -- stretch current resources out until we know what to do next. We can't snap our fingers and solve the world's energy problems in a day. We need time. We can't bargain with the laws of physics and resource limitations. Energy is a hard problem, and people who think technology will easily solve it are the ones that are living in a fantasy world. I can't fuel my car on press conferences about promising technologies. All I'm saying is: what if it isn't as easy as people hope? Shouldn't we be a bit cautious given the uncertainties? Why be reckless about it?

BONUS: voluntarily curbing demand a little now is the best possible thing that could lower gasoline prices. People always seem to forget the demand side of the supply:demand equation, and, until the events of the last week, it was growing demand that has driven gas prices up over the last couple of years -- growth faster than the supply can easily grow to meet. It's like people have been binge drinking this stuff for the last decade, and they're suprised when the price goes up. Duh. Even though plenty is left to last a while, the bar is having trouble keeping up. I'm not looking forward to the fights if supply runs low, let alone the hangover.

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Watch the segment online

[syntax]

That's right -- you did. http://www.pbs.org/saf/1506/segments/1506-1.htm

Water separation is energy EXPENSIVE.

[Bahumat]

Separating water into component hydrogen and oxygen takes more energy than you get out of burning the hydrogen. Electrolysis is VERY energy expensive.

Liberating hydrogen from an ammonia mixture is probably much cheaper, energy-wise, than trying to break stable molecular bonds.

switch to hydrogen

[xbudex]

I found this page a while ago. A page saying you can switch your car to run on hydrogen. I'm not sure if it is bunk or not. They claim to have over 50,000 trouble-free miles on their prototypes.

There is a high initial cost, but if you spend about $7000 on a system, and normally spend about $50 a week on gas, then it would pay for itself in less than 3 years.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[multiplexo]

People who want the car to be less central to American society do so because cars are wasteful, pollutive, and there ought to be more alternatives available... not because they "hate our freedom."

The word is "polluting". There is no such word as "pollutive" when you use it you reveal yourself to be a stupid fuck. And if you're a stupid fuck who can't master English then why should anyone listen to what you have to say?

Unless you can provide a quote from this "sub-culture" where they specifically say that they're against clean energy, I must conclude that you are either having paranoid delusions or a troll.

How about this little doozie from Jeremy Rifkin:

"It [cheap fusion energy] is the worst thing that could happen to our planet."

"Fear of Fusion: What If It Works?" Los Angeles Times, April 19, 1989

Let's face it, if someone invented a clean and cheap source of energy tomorrow there would be two losers, the fossil fuels industry and environmental groups.

We should go back to the horse. Car = Shackles.

[the_REAL_sam]

CARS BURN GAS. HORSES LIVE ON GRASS. And it doesnt take a pack of genii to figure out that a colt is free when you own 2 horses. NOW THAT'S EFFICIENT.

the car:

must be manufactured,
weighs 1500 lbs to move a 150 lb person around,
ties your mobility to exon,
burns arab blood,
costs you insurance,
costs you monthly payment,
registration,
tickets,
mantenance, repairs,
makes so much noise pollution that many neighborhoods have had to build walls against them,
RESULTS in added commuter time (since people would live near their jobs or use mass transit if they didnt drive cars),
RESULTS in the LOSS of roughly 20% of urban land (which is the most expensive) being converted into parking and roads,
RESULTS in the destruction of urban human habitat (via billboards) drivethrougs neon signs,

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[cheesybagel]

The fact that in the USA there are often zoning laws which prevent mixing commercial and residential functions in the same building is often the cause of crap like this.

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Two of the best alternatives

[KonoWatakushi]

that I have come across are biodiesel production from algae, and more recently the flying electric generator. The latter is only used for producing energy, but effective Hydrogen storage would make it even more useful. (Take a look, it really is an interesting idea, and should be perfectly feasible...)

Even so, in terms of energy density, it is hard to beat hydrocarbons, and the distribution system is already in place. Since the algae consume as much CO2 as is produced by the combustion of the diesel, there is no net increase in greenhouse gasses. It is effectively solar power, with an efficient energy carrier. In addition, the OPOC diesel engine, allows for very small size and high efficiency. (it is ~1lb/HP, or ~0.6g/W ;) More details are available here.

Also, when flywheel energy storage matures a bit more, it should allow for some great improvements in electric and hybrid cars. Flywheels have extraordinary power density, and can be charged and dischared in seconds, which allows them to recapture ~80% of the energy during braking, and provide for decent acceleration. There is some information at AFS Trinity, though the site could be a bit better. The basic ideas behind this flywheel tech are fascinating in themselves, but I've already wandered far enough off topic...

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I must say that...

[xactuary]

I for one, bid farewell to our fossil fuel overlords.

Re:I must say that...

[chawly]

Yep, back to the old tents, camels, and fetch the salt routine, guys.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[greg_barton]

Is it OK with you if the zookeeper makes the free and voluntary choice to let the lions out at the zoo and eat your children?

Living in a society involves limiting your freedoms to benefit the common good. If rampant consumption of our resources threatens our very existence, you're damn right I'll limit your right to drive anywhere you like in whatever vehicle you like.

But fear not, that won't be necessary. The market will limit you long before that, at the current rate of increase in gas prices.

Anyway, nice FUD you've go tgoing there. It's a clever way to get right leaning thinkers herding towards alternative renewable energy. Any time you make it a "fight the libruls fer your rights!" issue you're sure to get the conservative wingnuts on your side. Good job!

Photosynthesis is highly inefficient

[erice]

AFAIK, the best solar cells available are plant cells

Far from it. Photosyntheis is only 3-6% efficient.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/w7241e/w7241e05.htm

By contrast, commercially available solar cells are between 10 and 35% efficient.

Re:Photosynthesis is highly inefficient

[shotfeel]

That's true. but "best" takes several factors into account (though there's still much room for disagreement). I'm going to have to read back through that article a bit more.

I'm trying to factor in the many other variables as well, including reliability, sustainability, distrubution, environmental benefit...

I guess "best" really isn't an easy thing to define.

Re:Photosynthesis is highly inefficient

[benjamindees]

That makes me wonder. The goal in photovoltaics research seems to be to get the efficiency as high as possible. The drivers seem to be space and remote research and small/mobile applications.

But with each new generation, the costs just keep going up. Each more efficient type of cell becomes less and less likely to be deployed on a wide scale. Most of the affordable cells seem to be just the "defective" leftovers of these efficient versions.

At the same time, we talk about having to use large amounts of biomass for energy in the future. These analyses typically include inputs and costs such as fertilizers, planting and harvesting, and transport. At 3% efficiency, minus these costs, biomass doesn't seem like the best solution.

Wouldn't the logical thing to do, then, be to go the other way with photovoltaic research? If you can give farmers a solar cell that is only 10% efficient, but affordable, it would make sense to replace crops. In the grand scheme of things, we have lots of empty space on this earth in which to collect sunlight. It doesn't matter if you use a solar cell that's only 10% efficient, if the best alternative is corn, that's 6% efficient, and takes all sorts of other inputs.

Two Words:

[temojen]

Regenerative Braking

Re:500 km on a 50 L tank? Bah!

[barchibald]

And...you emited a crapload of CO2, a ridiculously large amount of particulate pollutant and made a bunch of stink.

The requirement is not that things go really far on a tank, but that they go as far on a refill to fit with the current distribution of refilling stations around the country.

I am all for what you are doing - totally commendable. But...it pales in comparison to the dream hydrogen car. Think solar power produces storeable hydrogen produces energy and water. We'd be able to see the hills of LA that are rumored to exist.

water?

[VolciMaster]

ok, so it's not easy to get the H2 back out, but hydrogen sits around all over the place in water just fine...

Re:Hold on, more info in the summary than the arti

[sunbeam60]

Well, I picked it up of from an article in Jyllands Posten, the largest Danish newspaper. But seeing as it was in Danish, I figured it wouldn't make much sense to post the link in the submission.

But you can pick up the current issue of Journal of Materials Chemistry if you want to read the article about it. I can't post a link for it as the online edition seems to be for subscribers only.

While I'm prone to speculation, I usually stay away from speculating about other people's speculations when submitting Slashdot articles.

Wrong.

[raehl]

If they started making a reasonable return instead of the ass raping they give now, gasoline would be at a more reasonable price.

That's a fallacy. What would happen is all of the gas stations would run out of gas, and then a secondary market would develop where people would resell the gas at the price determined by the market. The consumers are screwed either way; its better for us if the oil companies get the money as they'll at least spend some of it on getting more expensive oil out of the ground to sell later.

A good analogy is concert or sporting event tickets. The promoters have decided to make a "reasonable" profit on the tickets, and sell them at a price below market value. Does the consumer get less expensive tickets? No - scalpers buy them all up, and then sell them at the appropriate price. The only people who benefit from that are the ticket scalpers.

Re:Wrong.

[hesiod]

> The only people who benefit from that are the ticket scalpers.

So are you claiming that poor Ticketmaster isn't still making a boatload of money off of those ticket sales as well? They are...

Re:Wrong.

[raehl]

That's not related - ticketmaster makes money off the ridiculous fees they charge ON TOP of the ticket price.

That's nothing to do with the artificially low price charged by the promoter/team/venue.

Re:Wrong.

[hesiod]

The way I see it, Exxon makes money off the ridiculous fees they charge on top of the refined oil price.

When do we get biodiesel-electric hybrid cars?

[cpeterso]

I'm waiting for [bio]diesel-electric hybrid cars. I don't know why car companies are waiting so long. The US is unfriendly towards any diesel (regardless of how "clean" it may be), so that may be a legal speedbump..

Re:When do we get biodiesel-electric hybrid cars?

[fred fleenblat]

Oddly, the US allows zillions of diesel vehicles on the road, they just have to be trucks over a certain weight class (8500 lbs?).

Why entire fleets of smelly diesel trucks are allowed but a nearly pollution-free jetta or mercedes diesel is a no-no is beyond my comprehension.

Low-sulfur diesel is supposed to be introduced to the US in the next couple of years to allow for catalytic converters on diesels. Hopefully, this will make it easier for manufacturers to meet emissions standards for passenger cars. Even more hopefully, new trucks will be required to meet the same standards...ah, keep dreaming.

Re:When do we get biodiesel-electric hybrid cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Diesel cars exist in America.. including Mercedes

Re:When do we get biodiesel-electric hybrid cars?

[fred fleenblat]

I'm in one the states (CA,MA,ME,NY,VT) that has new car emmision standards set too high for mercedes or vw to meet currently with their diesels. The other 45 states do have diesels available, you're right.

Re:When do we get biodiesel-electric hybrid cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Low-sulfur diesel is supposed to be introduced to the US in the next couple of years to allow for catalytic converters on diesels.

Low-sulfur petrodiesel* will arrive in the US in late 2006 (unless they push the date back ... again). And it will be a good thing, but it won't be so automakers can put catalytic converters on diesels. Volkswagen (the only automaker to still sell passenger diesels in the US, IIRC) has been putting catalytic converters on their diesels for years. The TDI FAQ even has recommendations for things to do to keep your CC healthy.

Which is not to say that the improvements are independent of the CC -- but that it's not as mundane as "ULSD = we can now install CC's on diesel engines".

(* We already have low-sulfur diesel. Biodiesel has no sulfur. And some petrodiesel is apparently already ULSD-ready. The big deal is that in October 2006, *all* diesel fuel will be ULSD here in the states.)

Perfect containment?

[atcurtis]

I find it difficult to believe that they have found a perfect way to contain hydrogen gas without any loss...

Hydrogen has an annoying habit of losing its only electron and tunnelling through almost any substance and then picking up another electron on the other side. As a lone nucleus, it is many times smaller than the typical size of the atom (nucleus and electron).

Pure hydrogen would leak out ... slowly.

AFAIK, the "best" way to contain hydrogen gas with lowest leakage is to put a metal film on a glass container.

Of course, this is not my area of expertise so I may be completely wrong!

Re:500 km on a 50 L tank? Bah!

[chl]

Quoting: I got 1,100 km on my 55L tank just this weekend. What's the trick?

Energy density. As in "not equal between hydrogen and diesel". Since getting enough hydrogen into a less than car-sized tank has hitherto been a challenge, this is nice progress.

chl

Source energy

[phorm]

That's not as much an issue as you might think. Some of the tradeoffs in creating portable energy is that it uses fixed-sources in the process. In many cases, these sources may be either renewable (Hydroelectric, window, tidepool, etc) power, or long-term sustainable (nuclear, etc). Around here it wouldn't matter much if you used 600MW to create 200MW worth of pellets, as our power is Hydroelectric and 'refills' on its own.

Re:The utopianists

[wytcld]

You could just as well say, "The utopianists believe that necessary energy technologies will always arrive in time to ensure our civilization's smooth path to utopia. They believe that either some hidden natural law or divine being assures this. They also believe that this law or being requires faith, or it won't come through. According to them, showing any caution in the rate at which we burn through our current energy resources would demonstrate a lack of faith. Such a lack of faith, if demonstrated, will cause the natural law/divine being to withhold the otherwise promised new energy technologies, and we'll enter a state of extreme planetary entropy instead of the promised utopia.

"Similarly, these utopians believe that if your car will go at 100 mph, it is good and necessary to do so. They hate all speed limits and traffic cops."

Re:The utopianists...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we have sufficient real estate and energy sources such that each and every person on the planet can have a free standing home, and drive whenver and wherever they want? If not, then who gets a slice of that limited pie

Actually, there is no need "every person on the planet" to have a free standing home... virtually all cultures have the concept of a family unit (some more extended than others) that share a dwelling. My guess is that yes we could provide each unit with a free standing home.

That said, you committed a common logical falacy-- not everyone wants to live in a free standing home. Personal example: My family and I moved from the Southwest to the East Coast. In the Southwest we lived in a nice trailer on half an acre of land. On the East Coast we bought a townhouse. It was very nice, but we didn't like living so close to everyone (even though there was a fair amount of managed open space between townhouse groups). One day I met a woman who had also moved from another area. However, there was a difference-- she moved from a densley populated area (even more so than the one we were in). She also had difficulty with the adjustment-- her neighbors were not close enough! She missed being able to just go out onto the stoop and interact with other people!

Clearly people are different. Don't assume all want to live one way or another.

Re:How does it come out? - France

[Anonymous Coward]

We do need nuclear plants. But Three Mile Island singlehandedly poisoned the public conception of nuclear power, and then Chernobyl put the nails into the coffin. Americans are gullible and radiophobic. There have been no nuclear plants built here since 1978, and that's already a problem, what with the blackouts in California and such.

Something to consider...

[cr0sh]

This "new" hydrogen "pellet" sounds real similar to what was demonstrated (in a GM prototype, no less!) several years ago based on a patented technology called "Powerball". The company (Powerball, Inc?) created this technology that bound hydrogen to borax, as a "borohydrate" or something - which when combined with water, produced hydrogen, heat, and when dried, something that could be easily turned back into borax.

At the time, I was pretty excited. Over time, I realized that since this country has a lot of borax near Barstow/Daggett, California (ie, 20 mule team Boron), which also has a very convenient freight rail line nearby as well as a freeway with tons of long haul trucks (as anyone who has gone through Kramer Junction can attest to) - that combining the Powerball technology with a solar-power water disassociation plant (ie, use a similar system as current refineries do with hydrocarbons to crack the water into hydrogen and oxygen - but use high-intesity solar heat to power it, using a similar system as the Solar-1 project in Daggett, or the other high-temperature solar plants out there) - right there in the desert we could easily have a plant that takes borax and combines it with hydrogen (where to get the water is an issue - colorado river diversion?), creating a pelletized fuel to be shipped by truck and rail to the rest of the country. When refilling the car, exchange the "slush" for fresh pellets and water - the slush is pumped and trucked back to the plant to close the cycle (thus part of the water and borax returns to be recycled).

I am sure that the Powerball technology had problems similar to the way this new technology seems to, which is probably why the technology just seemed to "vanish" after the GM demonstration...

Something which also vexes me is what ever happened with the McMaster Motor? The thing seemed very simple - a nutating disk/sphere system (similar to what is in a gas or water meter), powered by an internal combustion system or steam, which essentially had on a few moving parts (something like three or so). Regardless, we need new engine designs like this - the whole piston sliding up and down turning a crankshaft with valves, etc - all of it is too many parts which rob fuel efficiency. Less moving parts, less friction, better efficiency!

Finally - what about an engine that ran on water? If we can disassociate water into hydrogen and oxygen on a larger scale, can we do the same within an engine? For instance, I have read about these devices which are basically like a quarter shrinker - where the electrodes (attached to the capacitor) are ran through a tube of water. I have heard that this extreme energy release causes the water to disassociate into hydrogen and oxygen, which then immediately ignites (they are call water exploders or something like that - part of the whole high voltage crowd who like to play with things like quarter shrinkers and huge Tesla coils). Could an engine be built that did the same thing?

Or, what about a "flash steam" engine - where the water stays water until it enters the cylinder, which is kept very hot and the water immediately flashes into steam, driving the piston?

I am not an engineer, I am sure all of these ideas have little to no merit - but it is ideas like these that are what we need to work on and develop, then bring to market - if we want to break our dependency on oil for transportation. Oil will always have a place in industry and transportation - but for ordinary transport of people and goods, other technologies can and should fill the role. We have to think of ways to do this from the generation/extraction through to propelling the vehicle and then recycling whatever (if anything) is left over back into the process. This will require new ideas not just for the fuel or energy carrier, but also for the engine which will provide the motive force...

Crashing

[idokus]

"this method binds hydrogen to a pellet which is completely safe to handle at room temperature."

hmm... well if a car is crashing it will get alot hotter then just room temperature, the impact of the crash will result in disformation of the vehicle but also in an encrease in temperature.

burning hydrogen, energy storage

[j1m 5n0w]

The next problem facing hydrogen as an energy carrier is the fuel cell, which requires costly noble metal catalysts

Fuel cells may be the most efficient option, but hydrogen could be used to fuel regular internal combustion engines as well.

One of the benefits of using hydrogen as an energy carrier is that the energy need not be consumed immediately, it can be stored when there is an energy surplus and used when there is a shortage. (This is a possible solution to a problem with wind and solar energy -- what do you do when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow?)

Re:Ban Friction?

[RM6f9]

Are orgasms possible in a frictionless universe?

How about solar for the electricity?

[Wilk4]

how about using solar power for the electricity generation to separate out the hydrogen. put some arrays in nice hot, inhospitable places and they could cleanly generate H2 all day long.

sure solar arrays aren't that efficient, but the source is free and going to 'waste' if not captured anyway...

... and it's non-polluting... which sure beats nuclear, oil/coal, etc.

Or use similar energy sources, such as wave-action plants or dam-based hydro-electric plants. Energy is around us, in the sunlight, water movement, etc. If we have an efficient way to store and transport it, then why use dirty sources that will run out?

(Who here has read the scifi series where 'shipstones' are an invention? I can't recall the series or author, but the inventor there realized that the problem of energy wasn't that there wasn't enough, but that there wasn't a good enough way to store and transport it to where it was needed. He invented a super-efficient 'battery' and changed the world... Charge them up with solar arrays, microwave transmission from solar array satellites, whatever, no hurry. yes, I know it's fiction, but the concept of the importance of the 'form' of energy storage being critical is probably valid)

Re:How about solar for the electricity?

[jander]

The book you are thinking of is Friday by Robert A. Heinlein

Name the Hydrogen Pill Contest Entry

[mbstone]

AntiBeano.

Hydrogen vs batteries

[SiliconEntity]

The real issue with hydrogen is whether it is better to use hydrogen to generate electricity in the car, that then runs electric motors, or to use electric vehicles directly. These are two good approaches for a post-oil future. The main alternatives are biodiesel and ethanol, but both are questionable as sources of energy, at least in temperate climates. Several studies have found that they take in more energy in fertilizer and processing than they create.

But back to hydrogen. Basically a hydrogen car is an electric car, but the energy is stored in hydrogen rather than batteries. The hydrogen is then oxidized in a fuel cell to produce electricity. Hydrogen in a post-oil future will be produced from electricity. So basically hydrogen can be thought of as a physical way of carrying electrical energy.

Hydrogen has several pros and cons vs transporting and storing electricity via wires and batteries. It's biggest advantage is that it can be used to fuel cars very quickly. Hydrogen stores a lot of energy per kilogram and cars could be refueled in a similar amount of time as they are today with gasoline. To recharge a pure electric car's battery in five minutes, on the other hand, would require enormous currents on the order of a megawatt! Such currents would be difficult for unskilled drivers to handle safely and reliably.

Beyond this one big advantage, most other considerations would favor battery powered electric vehicles. They can be charged at night, when electrical demand is low, so not much new infrastructure is needed for carrying additional electrical power. Commuting and local trips could be handled completely by overnight recharging and there would be no need to refuel on the road at all. Only for long trips does the refueling problem mentioned above arise.

Further, generating the power can be done largely using existing electrical generating capacity. See this article which shows that California's unused nighttime generating capacity could power a 100% electrical vehicle fleet in that state.

Hydrogen would require an enormous new infrastructure of manufacturing facilities, pipelines and filling stations. Some of this can be retrofit from existing oil infrastructure, but not that much. Hydrogen is a tiny molecule that can penetrate many types of pipelines. Likewise gasoline storage tanks do not have to be air tight. Piping the nation or the world with hydrogen is a herculean task.

As far as cost, both batteries and hydrogen fuel cells are high, but batteries are almost practical, as we have seen with the small existing fleet of commercial battery powered vehicles. Hydrogen fuel cell cars, on the other hand, would have to sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover their current costs. Much work is needed before these fuel cells become economically viable.

In short, by almost every measure, pure electric vehicles are more efficient and cost effective than hydrogen power. The one big problem they have is effective, fast refueling. That is where hydrogen wins hands down. The question is whether the other problems with hydrogen can be overcome more cheaply than finding an effective, safe way to provide megawatts of electricity needed to recharge electric vehicles when they are going on long trips.

New technology for H2 storage

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

From the summary:

In contrast to previous storage mechanisms, this method binds hydrogen to a pellet which is completely safe to handle at room temperature. While bound in this medium no hydrogen loss occurs, enabling hydrogen to be stored cheaply for indefinite periods. When needed, the extraction of hydrogen is relatively simple.

I also have a method for binding hydrogen to another substance, it is completely safe to handle at room temperature, there is no hydrogen loss and it can be stored cheaply for indefinite periods. It is furthermore completely non-toxic and even healthy to consume.

I claim:

1. A hydrogen storage system method where 2 hydrogen atoms are covalently bound with an assemblage consisting of eight protons, eight neutrons, and eight electrons, where the enumerated items in the assemblage are nuclearly bound together, and

2. An extraction method consisting of applying a DC potential difference, thereby creating a DC current through the substance and collection of hydrogen gas at the cathode.

Now off to file that patent...

(I'd possibly even get one granted for that, too...)

Re:New technology for H2 storage

[Anonymous Coward]

"Completely safe"!?! You've got to be kidding. That stuff is dangerous.

The future of energy transport is already here

[electroniceric]

First of all, water is the major greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

This is absolutely true, though in the emissions sense it is more or less irrelevant because it's not a lever we can move.

Second, in terms of energy efficiency, the power stations are FAR more efficient than automobiles. If we're able to tap the energy from those stations for use in vehicles through electric cars, hydrogen cells, or some other method, it will be better than the localized burning of fuels in cars and trucks.

Absolutely agreed, provided that the overall environmental damage from production at the power plant can be minimized. Oil's main advantage is that it's a convenient way to carry pre-made energy around. Electricity is an (nearly) equally convenient way to carry energy around, and there are far better ways to condense and minimize contamination than with oil. Furthermore, we already have a thorough electrical infrastructure built up. And, as everyone points out, you have your choice of ways to make electricity, whereas making oil is still extremely difficult.

It surprises me that nobody has brought up the viability of electric cars. They are quiet and efficient, and you can put in as much power as you like in without affecting noise or emissions. The only thing an electric car cannot presently do is travel hundreds of miles, which describes the vast majority of trips people take in their cars. And since electric motors are vastly more efficient than internal combustion engines, you don't take any double hit from turning the electricity back into chemical energy, and you can use some of that efficiency for power rather than conservation (let's be realistic, people LOVE powerful cars) without smogging up the world any more.

Maybe I'm living in a cave, but I just don't get why auto makers can't build truly gas-electric cars (rather than battery-supplemented gas cars) - ones that run a battery-based, wall-charged engine for all but the longest trips.

Re:How does it come out? - France

[Optic7]

Interesting... I wonder why France and these other countries haven't made a huge push to convert to hydrogen cars yet. If they could provide the energy for it easily and cheaply, it seems that to do so would provide a huge boost for their economies.

What the hell?

[Shirloki]

I've been hearing about hydrogen for the past few years now. Everybody's been SO EXCITED, but it still continues to piss me off: Where the fuck do we get the hydrogen without using fossil fuels? And if we do use fossil fuels how the hell is this better than just burning the stuff in an engine of any kind?

Does anybody have a straight answer to this? Or should I just continue to bitch about how we should be researching alternatives (more efficient solar power, bio-fuels, etc.)?

Hydrogen Electric vs. Electric

[Anonymous Coward]

Could Someone explain to me why hydrogen is touted as being the future of transportation and what are the advantages of using hydrogen over new battery technologies such as lithium ion?
Since hydrogen is just a method of storing electricity that we generate by some means(nuclear, hydro, coal etc.), why don't we just use batteries. I read somewhere that there is a new battery developed for EVs that can charge in less than 5 minutes. Of course EVs, have the same issues as hydrogen; What should be used to generate the electricity? and How efficient is the means of storage. I would guess that a battery would be more efficient, but I'm not really that informed about how well the current fuel cell technology operates.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[bnenning]

It's a clever way to get right leaning thinkers herding towards alternative renewable energy. Any time you make it a "fight the libruls fer your rights!" issue you're sure to get the conservative wingnuts on your side.

Hey, some of us conservative wingnuts have always been in favor of alternate energy. Especially nuclear, but the greens hate that for mostly incoherent reasons. In addition to the environmental improvements, it will be great to be able to tell the various tyrants in the Middle East to go pound sand.

Hydrogen is useless. CARBON DIOXIDE IS PLANT FOOD!

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole subject points out the tragic flaw in the hydrogen hysteria. Hydrogen is not an energy SOURCE. It is only a pathetically impractical energy STORAGE mechanism.
Also, before you eagerly erradicate CO2 from the world you might review your high school biology. CO2 AND SUNLIGHT ARE THE FOOD FOR ALL PLANT LIFE and therefore for ALL LIFE.
We are probably living in an era of plant starvation as carbon is steadily fixed and buried in the ground. Pumping and digging up hydrocarbons could actually be saving the world from becoming a total desert. Think about it.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[greg_barton]

Especially nuclear, but the greens hate that for mostly incoherent reasons.

I'm with you there. Just about the only thing stopping me from joining the Green Party is their irrational opposition to nuclear energy. That could change in a few years, though. The founder of the Sierra Club just recently came out in favor of nuclear power, so hopefuly some minds will be changed soon.

And it's the best, and in my opinion only, solution to the middle east. Stop being addicted to oil and stop paying the pushers.

Mod parent down, numbers wrong - H2 is 4X better

[taharvey]

Parents efficiency numbers are pulled out of the air.

Here are some real numbers:
* 55% efficiency of fuel->electric in combined cycle plant (powered by crude or gas)
* 85% efficiency of electrolysis
* 50% efficiency of a PEM fuel cell
* ~90% efficiency of an electric controller/motor
* 12% efficiency of an IC engine in an average drive cycle
* 40% efficiency of crude oil->gasoline

So comparing systems normalized on crude oil, and assuming the same transmission and friction losses in the vehicle:
* Crude->gas->ic engine->motion is about 4.8% efficient
* Crude->electricity->electrolysis->fuel cell-motion is 21% efficient. 4.3 times better

To give an idea of how bad current vehicles are a 1995 Ford Taurus throughout the driving cycle only requires on average 6.3 kW (150 MPG) in motive energy, but only achieves ~28 MPG. And that is before addressing issues like reduced weight.

But more importantly hydrogen can be generated by solar, wind, or biological processes. Look at the economics. Wind can be purchased in bulk for ~3 cent/kWh. At 36.6 kWh/gallon gasoline equivalent and 85% electrolyzer efficiency: Hydrogen costs $1.10 per gallon of gas equivalent today using renewables . Right now that is sounding rather good. Not that hydrogen is the end all, but it is a good alternative to oil.

Stuff camel dung in the tank

[Pejorian]

From a web page about ammonia:

The name ammonia comes from Jupiter Ammon, whose temple in Libya was famous for producing sal ammoniac [Ammonium chloride, NH4Cl] from camel dung, noted from the 8th century.

A product of protein metabolism is urea, CO(NH2)2. This was the first "organic" compound artificially synthesized, by Wöhler in 1828. It probably occurs significantly in camel dung, since camels are noted water conservers. The rest of us excrete urea in urine. Heated, it gives off ammonia by pyrolysis.

In fact, the reaction of ammonia and carbon dioxide to form urea and water is reversible, pressure favoring the production of urea, heat the production of ammonia. This reaction is used commercially to make urea fertilizer from ammonia. An early source of ammonia was pyrolysis of hoofs and horns, giving spirits of hartshorn.

Re:Ban Friction?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Are orgasms possible in a frictionless universe?

Only if you buy some super lubricant right now and starts practicing! :P

MPG and Total Gallons

[tyrione]

500 Km/tank of hydrogen:

310.7 miles/13.21 gallons of Hydrogen Pellets.

23.52 mpg of Hydrogen Pellets.

Outside the reduced emissions, the cost of energy per gallon of Hydrogen Pellets isn't going to compell folks to switch. Up the MPG atleast 3 fold and drop the cost of hydrogen pellets to $7/gallon and you just might be able to convince folks that 70 mpg will save them money and feel good about keeping the environment more clean.

Plastic pellets, eh?

[smithmc]

And what are we going to use to make all that plastic, eh?

~23 miles per gallon

[everphilski]

...about 23 miles per gallon... kinda sucks, all things considered, although it does avoid the problem of hydrogen embrittlement and cryogenic storage. Thing is, where do we get hydrogen from? That's right, most efficient/cheap process is from oil.

-everphilski-

Re:~23 miles per gallon

[Anonymous Coward]

You only need an energy source like oil if you want on-demand energy.

If there is good a way to store hydrogen - then intermittent renewable sources of energy can now be used to make that hydrogen in the first place. The stored hydrogen is then used wherever there is an on-demand consumer of that energy - such as a car.

Wind turbines, solar power collectors and tidal energy can now all be used to produce the hydrogen in the first place because the "intermittent supply" problem of these energy sources has now been eliminated.

Re:~23 miles per gallon

[BobPaul]

not 23 miles per gallon. 320 miles per fill up.

Since the 23 gallons of H2 using this storage method only contains about half the energy of 23 gallons of gas, this is about 46 miles per gallon if it was gas.

Can your gasoline car do 320 miles on half a tank of gas? Can it get 46 MPG? These are the comparisons you must make due to differing energy densities.

Also, we don't produce the hydrogen in the car, we do that in a large plant to maximize efficiency of the hydrogen. Hydrogen is basically a battery, while oil is a source. But hydrogen can be a much better battery than LithiumIon (current best/weight) and there are lots of other sources of electricity that will become more and more viable over the years.

Go ahead and try to mandate that ever car must include scrubbers to limit carbon output. Now do the same on a giant plant producing hydrogen to put on those cars. Which is cheaper to do cleanly?
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Re:The utopianists...

[Mr. Mikey]

All right, I'll rephrase:

"Do we have sufficient real estate and energy sources such that each and every person on the planet who wants one can have a free standing home, and drive whenver and wherever they want? If not, then who gets a slice of that limited pie?"

Also, while supply may well exceed demand for "free standing homes in Death Valley", I very much doubt that is the case for "free standing homes on the Mendocino coast"... not to mention the deleterious effects of increased population density on those choice spots.

Sure, not everyone wants to live the same way... but a hell of a lot of people would live in a choice spot if they could. The "tragedy of the commons" applies here... lots of people building houses in choice locations can make those locations a lot less choice.

Right now, the limiting factors on "choice spots" are local regulations on when and where one can build, and cost. Do you object to the concept of regulations telling you you can't build where you want to?

Idiot

[HornWumpus]

Lighter power plant and no brakes means the car weighs less.

How much do those batterys weigh? (much more then the difference between a four banger and an eight)

You're going to use regenerative braking for a panic stop? (they still need regular brakes)

The main point you miss is although central generation is more efficent you incur new losses (battery inefficencys, electric line loses etc). Each of which multiply.

You can put low rolling resistance tires on any car. The reason nobody does is they are as hard as rocks hence give an awfull ride.

But hybrid cars make hippy chicks puddle like nothing else these days. Who can put a value on that.

False analogy

[blackhedd]

Interesting fact (if true) that burning coal releases a lot of natural uranium into the atmosphere. It may be radioactive, but at such a low level (U-238 half-life is billions of years) that it poses no large-scale health risk. It's NOT high-level radiation, and it's not killing real people.
You also refer to the fission-energy potential of the emitted uranium. You still have to capture it and separate the U-235, which is an energy-intensive process.
In terms of real waste from real nuclear power, it's not the high-level radiation you worry about. The really intense stuff, like the I-131, is gone in six months. The bad stuff is the mildly radioactive isotopes like strontium-90 and cesium-137 that have strong physical chemical affinities to human tissue and stick around for hundreds of years.

Re:False analogy

[Phanatic1a]

It may be radioactive, but at such a low level (U-238 half-life is billions of years) that it poses no large-scale health risk.

Uranium is a toxic heavy metal, like coal. And the U-235 amount is still over 10,000 tons, and that, while still a relatively low-level alpha emitter, has a much shorter half-life than -238. And we *still* haven't talked about the daughter products. Or the thorium isotopes, which occur at even higher quantities. And *their* daughter products, some of which are quite nasty.

*Or* all the other crud, greenhouse gases, particulates, and other types of air pollution, stuff that kills more than 50,000 people each year in the US alone. I mean, c'mon, you're honestly going to compare 50 *pounds* of dense waste per megawatt of capacity per year to the pollution coal plants put out?

The bad stuff is the mildly radioactive isotopes like strontium-90 and cesium-137 that have strong physical chemical affinities to human tissue and stick around for hundreds of years.

That's absolutely true. But it's nothing that can't be dealt with, and dealing with it would kill far, far fewer people and have a far smaller environmental cost than any other useful alternative.

Re:False analogy

[Phanatic1a]

"Uranium is a toxic heavy metal, like *lead." Dammit.

Its chemical toxicity actually exceeds that of lead, but while any industry that spit that much lead into the atmosphere wouldn't survive long under current environmental legislation, coal plants get a pass.

Re:False analogy

[blackhedd]

Coal is carbon, not a "toxic heavy metal." The half-life of U-235 is nearly a billion years, and it's less than 1% of the volume. Among the daughter species, if you're worred about the radium, don't. The volumes are still too low and the material too scattered. This is all theoretical because I still haven't granted your main point.

I'd like to see the proof that particulates, NOx, SO2, and global warming from coal emissions kill 50,000 Americans/year. I'm not granting you that either.

In sum, I'm not buying the public-health-based argument for nuclear power.

However I do agree with the positive formulation of your real point. Fission-based nuclear power is definitely part of the solution in our energy-policy mix. I do agree that better technology can be used to overcome the waste-disposal objections, although I don't know what those technologies are, yet.

Re:False analogy

[Phanatic1a]

Coal is carbon, not a "toxic heavy metal."

Typo, I mean "like lead." If a coal plant spit out as much lead into the air as it does uranium and thorium, it'd be shut down.

Among the daughter species, if you're worred about the radium, don't.

Naw, I meant the whole decay chain, through thorium and protactinium and bismuth all the way down to lead. The bottom line is that releasing all that isotope mass into the atmosphere has real and measurable effects on the background count, causes real cancers, and causes real deaths. It's not a cost that can be ignored simply because it's so distributed.

I'd like to see the proof that particulates, NOx, SO2, and global warming from coal emissions kill 50,000 Americans/year.

I didn't mean to suggest that was all from coal emissions. Quite a lot of it is from air pollution from other sources, like cars. But 50,000 is at the low end of the scale. Here's a report on a study indicating that particulate air pollution alone is responsible for 32,000 deaths in the UK each year. The WHO estimates that air pollution contributes to 3 million deaths *each year*.

I do agree that better technology can be used to overcome the waste-disposal objections, although I don't know what those technologies are, yet./I.

The waste-disposal objections are primarily motivated by fear and ignorance. I think that the best way to overcome them is through better education.

You pay for the panels

[HornWumpus]

Solar cost per Kwh is outragous.

You can safely assume short term future incremental electrical use will be supplied by the same electric grid we are using today. That means most of it will come from buring coal. Coal boiler plants are about half as efficent as gas combined cycles. So now your electric car is making more polution then the gas powered one (still a good trade off as it will cut back funding for arabs).

If you start with 'enviromentalist crack' assumptions like free clean electric power you will reach false conclusions.

Re:You pay for the panels

[Wilk4]

I didn't say it was free, obviously the initial costs for equipment are quite high, but so is a coal plant. Incremental costs might be lower though, and it's not using up a scarce resource.

Environmentalist crack

[HornWumpus]

How much do you pay for electricity?

Do you think the people making that electricity burn coal etc because it's the most expensive?

If you start you arguement with a childish utopian dream it's hard to take you seriously.

Let us all know when you pay for enough solar cells to supply yourself with electicity.

Mod parent and grandparent down: wrong

[HornWumpus]

55% effciency for combined cycle? That's what percent of the generation base? Further it's never incremental it's baseload (that is to say the utilitys already run their most efficent plants full time). Incremental power in the USA (outside CA) is coal boiler @ about 25%. Thats half the claimed improvement lost to the first bit of critical thinking.

You missed electric transmission losses of about 20% (80% efficiency). Of course that depends on how far the electricity needs to be transmitted.

Where can you get wind power for 3 cents a Kwh? I call BS. Further your link for the efficency of a IC engine is BS (does'nt address the issue addresses fuel cells). Still further your link r.e. the efficency of the crude oil to gasoline does'nt address the issue it deals with diffent methods used to calculate such numbers.

So based on a quick bit of critical thinking and some checking of your links I find you to be FULL OF SHIT. Why would we trust the numbers you pulled out of the air any more then the numbers pulled out by the grandparent.

Re:Mod parent and grandparent down: wrong

[Dyolf Knip]

IC engines are about as good as they are ever going to get. Oil is only going to get more expensive to extract and it will be of steadily decreasing quality. That 4.8% efficiency (which is fairly accurate) gets lower with each passing year and there is nothing we can do about it.

Whereas additional power plants only need to be built, power transmission losses can be minimized, and H2 generation can be optimized with half a dozen lines of research. And furthermore, hydrogen generation can be powered by non-fossil-fuel sources; I would love to see you run a gasoline car off of hydro, tidal, or nuclear power.

Even if the two efficiencies were equal today, fuel cells (more flexible to begin with) are only getting better while IC engines are only getting worse.

Re:Mod parent and grandparent down: wrong

[taharvey]

Combined cycle
And your argument is? Do you realize that baseload is underutilized at night? The utilites can't turn off the steam turbines, because it takes too long to get them back up to syncronization. H2 production can be produced and stored, not a issue. Also, a lot of the newer, high efficiency plants are used for peak-loads, making them available for hydrogen product off-peak. Frankly I undershot the efficiency. The best plants going up are 58% efficiency (see last graph). PS. existing coal plants arn't that bad, typically 33-35% efficient. Though in the end the goal is to produce H2 with renewables anyways.

Transmission losses
A reasonable argument, though H2 can be produced on location and piplined. But going with your argument, your efficiency number is off. Average losses are only 7.2%.

Wind power price
I went off memory here, and I was off only slightly. Long-term wind contracts can be had for 3.5 cents/kWh. So hydrogen can be produced for $1.50 a gallon gas equiv - with retail wind power. If a wind company wanted to product H2 directly, it would be even lower.

IC engine Efficiency If you look in the fuel cell article, it clearly says that IC engine efficiency is 12% in a typical driving cycle. The problem isn't that IC engines can't be more efficient at the peak point, but that cars are driven in the real world all over the RPM spectrum, bringing the efficiency down substantally. Here is another link that claims a marginally higher 16% (depends on the car/driving cycle you use).

Crude oil to gasoline
As in the privious link, the Energy return of investment for US oil is 11, the EROI for gas is 4.4. Divide the two and you get 40% efficiency.

End result
Adding the trasmission losses to the mix, and taking the optpmistic view on average IC engine efficiency you still get 3 Times better with H2.

Re:Water separation is NOT energy EXPENSIVE.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all.

You can use renewable solar, wind turbine or tidal energy sources to get energy with which to electrolyse water, then store the resultant hydrogen.

The only reason why solar, wind turbine or tidal energy sources are not used at the moment is that they do not generate electricity "on demand". They generate only when the erratic energy source is available. Now with a bulk storage of hydrogen, it is possible to buffer the energy and use it on demand in cars.

This is the whole deal with the full hydrogen energy cycle. It uses no fuel at all.

Straight answer on hydrogen economy

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a means to store hydrogen, then intermittent sources of energy are now perfectly useable.

Wind turbines, solar power collectors and tidal energy can all now be used to collect free, renewable (albeit intermittent) energy and store it as hydrogen.

There is also biomas energy - things like the leftover material of sugar cane production - can now be burnt and stored as hydrogen. This isn't as clean, unfortunately, but it can be used to eliminate any dependence on oil.

actually, we already do.

[CFD339]

We burn oxygen in nearly every fuel we use at present. Its also poisonous. Pure oxygen will kill you. Admitedly, flourine will kill you more quickly.

My point was that if you go to the trouble of stripping Hydrogen from water, you're missing out on the other white meat (er...combustable).

I've had hazmat training, have you? Ever wondered what would happen if you had a tanker full of liquifed oxygen break open in an accident? Say it didn't blow up right away, but spilled on the ground as it boiled off. Someone drops a wrench or something and ....well....crater.

Re:actually, we already do.

[Alsee]

I guess the humor was unclear. The only way Oxygen can be "combustible", the only way oxygen can be a fuel, is with flourine as an oxidizer.

Oh, and as for the earlier question about "I wonder why they don't use both the hydrogen and the oxygen from water", the reason is that by simply dumping the oxygen into the atmosphere you dump about half the volume and half the hazard and 90% of the mass. When you want to use the hydrogen fuel you can simply grab air to burn the hydrogen with virtually no loss of efficency. Well, unless of course it's a rocket engine in which case simply grabing air doesn't work very well :)

-

On the spot much?

[BobPaul]

Just make those figures up on the spot did we?

Electrolosis in production environments tends to the 70-75% efficiency (www.elecdesign.com) and can be improved with various catalysts up to 90% (http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/)

Large scale coal plants do better much better than 50% efficiency, especially the newer ones. (we have lots of coal in ND, and thus export lots of electrical power. I've toured a few plants, but don't have the literature with me so I can't dispute this other than to say it's better)

fuel cells tend towards 80% efficiency (science.howstuffworks.com) and there is room for improvement yet.

No internal combustion engine using petro is anywhere near 35% efficient. 32% is on the high end. This number floats around 30% (ford.com)

On the other hand, internal combustion engines using hydrogen tend more towards 35-38% efficiency, so about the number you quoted. (ford.com)

Also, you're auto efficiency doesn't factor in the energy used (and efficiencies involved in) extracting and processing the fuel into gas. This information might have already been factored in your electrical plant estimate, which might explain why it's so much lower than it should be. Or that 50% is an average including low efficiency wind and solar that don't use coal.

Since I'm not actually sure what the powerplants should be, only that it's too low, I'll leave it at 50%, assuming it's fixed for extraction, etc. this gives us:

Fuelcell: 50% x 75% x 80% x 95% = 31%
Hydrogen internal: 50% x 75% x 38% = 14.25%
Current gas engines: well below 30% when including extracting fuels... more like 20% (ecen.com)

You still prove your point that internal combustion of hydrogen is undesirable, but internal combustion engines are not an efficient means of transport compared to fuelcell technology.

And I didn't use the 90% electrolysis that WILL be met once greater demand for hydrogen hits. This is already producable in small scales, and demand = competition = a reason to increase efficiency in the main stream.

Not to mention the CO2 scrubbers, fly ash collectors, etc that make a modern coal plant 100% better for the environment than 10,000 american automobiles
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Poor science, red-herring

[taharvey]

This is a bad nuclear industry commerical. It is a puedu-scientific red-herring.

The measurement of the nuclear exposure is proportional to the concentrated quantity of nuclear material. 10 PPM of diffuse radioactive material is not the same thing as having a gram, kilo, or ton sitting in front of you.

10 PPM diluted thousands of times in the air, distrubuted over wide areas, is less background radiation than what is naturally in the soils of many parts of the world. THIS IS NOT THE SAME THING AS CONCENTRATED RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS FROM NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS.

The main issue with nuclear is, who cares? Its more expensive than renewables that don't have the problems of nuclear waste, terrorism, proliferation, distribution from large centralized plants, and low Internal returns of investment due to the long contruction times.

Re:Poor science, red-herring

[Phanatic1a]

The measurement of the nuclear exposure is proportional to the concentrated quantity of nuclear material. 10 PPM of diffuse radioactive material is not the same thing as having a gram, kilo, or ton sitting in front of you.

Well, then, we have the solution to the nuclear waste problem.

Just burn it. Then folks like taharvey won't worry about it, once it's distributed evenly across the planet.

Oh *course* they're not the same thing. But claiming that having it diffused it better than having it concentrated in a readily-handleable form is asinine, it's like claiming that all the lead we were spitting into the environment back when cars still ran on leaded gas was less harmful than an equivalent amount of lead sitting there in the CONCENTRATED form of a big lead block.

Keep in mind that the above-ground nuclear tests that we conducted in Nevada, all on their own, increased the radiation exposure of Americans by 380 million person-rads, causing 120,000 cases of thyroid cancer resulting in 6,000 deaths, purely from the release of I-131.

That same exact amount of I-131 in a CONCENTRATED form would be easy to dispose of in a safe manner, and sure as HOLY LIVING FUCK wouldn't KILL SIX THOUSAND PEOPLE.

Re:Poor science, red-herring

[dbrutus]

Nuclear power is more expensive than renewables because the regulatory regime it operates under *makes it* more expensive. If you could cut out the political red tape and strictly enforce the engineering red tape (inspections and otherwise verifying the work's done right), you'd end up with much cheaper plants that were much safer.

Hydrogen is to gasoline as the sun is to battery.

[BobPaul]

Converting water to hydrogen and oxygen is roughly 75% efficient (90% at best, but cost prohibitive catalysts needed). Converting hydrogen to electricity is roughly 80% efficient and improving. We get out about 60% of the energy we put in.

But here you're comparing a source (like fossil fuels and the sun) to a carrier (like hydrogen/fuelcell mix and batteries)

Now, if you compare the efficiency of fuelcells to batteries (and factor in fuel economy of the overall system when including the weights of the two devices) you'll find fuelcells tend to come out on top.

Fuelcells are the large battery replacement, not a coal/oil replacement. But without fuelcells we'll probably never have decent electric cars and thus will never cut dependence on oil.
--
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Ethonal from wheat

[BobPaul]

Or you could do ethonal from wheat. Not sure how it compares to soy, but it's way better than ethonal from corn.

Also, if you're using bio-anything fuel you don't have to worry about emissions. Petro-diesel is worse due to heavy metals (not in biodiesel) that are cleaned out with scrubbers in modern exhaust systems. Gas "equivilants" don't have the heavy metals, but are a little less efficient. Both pump out CO2.

Bio-anything has no heavy metals and pumps out CO2 that came from current plants, ie it'll be no probablem for new plants to aborb that carbon as part of the natural cycle.
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Since wind is cheaper than nuclear, why bother?

[taharvey]

Long term wind contracts can be had for 3.5 cents/kWh retail.

The last nuclear plants to come on line in the US generated power at 10-15 cents/kWh - and that is not including all of the external costs the industry leaves up to the government to cover

PV, wind, and other renewable are growing 6 times faster in the market compared to nuclear. Twice as much wind capacity is being added every year than nuclear has added in the last 10.

With all of nuclear problems: cost, waste, terrorism, insurance subsidies, security, proliferation, centralization, long construction (read IRR profits)- why bother?

There are cheaper, better, decentrialized, safer solutions. Even photovoltaics generates power as economically, and its cost has been coming down exponentially, even without the trillion dollars in subsidies enjoyed by the nuclear industry over the last 50 years!

Yeah...

[taharvey]

Yeah, it called a nuclear industry marketing brochure. Really think about this for 1 millisec, and you will see its peudo-science. Trace nuclear material is NOT the same thing as bulk. My concrete in my house has a few PPM of nuclear material. Not the same thing an concentrated waste.

Re:Yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you weren't an idiot, you'd realize that properly stored concentrated waste is an even lesser threat.

And then it would be gone

[BobPaul]

gasoline would be at a more reasonable price.

You forgot "prompting the world to buy so much of it that we'd be out of it in 10 years"

What do you think prompted OPEC to form in the first place? You don't think it was the realization that they were going to run out of oil eventually and only through monopoly can they control the supply/demand curves to ensure they have oil through 2050. Maybe not, but the OPEC nations seem to think so... At least that's their public statement...
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Water == 0

[BobPaul]

Tell me: what is the energy density of water?

Zero. Water puts out fires. Duh!
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Better than the alternative

[BobPaul]

You don't swap pellets. You resaturate them by pumping more hydrogen across them.

The extra weight of the pellets is nominal since it's lighter than storing the same amount of energy in a thick bodied high-pressure tank, thus the less weight of the pellets (due to the thin walled tank) would be better than the other option.

The pellets are less flamable than hydrogen on it's own, since the pellets hold the hydrogen except under the right release conditions, so you wouldn't be dumping a full tank like you would in a high-pressure tank rupture.

Gasoline is also flamable, but cars only explode in the movies. It looks like pellets makes the same true for hydrogen cars.
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Gasoline != Hydrogen

[BobPaul]

50L to go 500kM is 10kM to the liter. Or about 23MPG. Not good.

Hydrogen is a gas. Gasses do not have a constant volume (as liquids and solids) so you can't compare hydrogen to gas directly by volume, but you can compare energy contents by weight.

Remeber, it doesn't take 1 gallon of gas to make 1 gallon of hydrogen. Since hydrogen by weight stores less energy, you can (gasp) produce more of it per gallon of gas you burn.

Gasoline holds roughly 2.5x more power/gallon than hydrogen stored in this method. Even at 75% conversion efficiency, if we used gasoline as the source to produce hydrogen we're still talking some 47 MPG for an equal comparison if we stored hydrogen in this method, which seems to put the most of it in the tightest volume. But we wouldn't be using gas. We'd be using coal, wind, nuclear, or some other high efficiency electrical generation.

Also, it wouldn't cost you $3/"gallon" of hydrogen. And they'd probably sell it by the pound, like propane.
--
Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!

Gallons of Hydrogen is irrelevant

[BobPaul]

That would be 311 miles in 13.2 gallons.

Who cares how many gallons? Gas and Hydrogen have different energy densities, and gas is a liquid while hydrogen has no fixed volume.

Instead think of it as 311 miles on a tank of gas, or between fill-ups.
--
Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!

Re:500 km on a 50 L tank? Bah!

[shplorb]

And...you emited a crapload of CO2, a ridiculously large amount of particulate pollutant and made a bunch of stink.

Modern common-rail turbocharged diesel engines are not only very efficient, they are very clean running.

Using B20 also means that the car polluted less than your average petrol engine and even the same engine if it was running straight petrodiesel. Biodiesel not only closes the carbon cycle, it burns cleaner and makes engines run better.

I just want to know where the diesel-electric cars are? The tech has been around for years and is used in trains and large earthmoving equipment - why can't it be scaled down to work with cars?

I'm obviously missing something here

[uptoeleven]

I'm obviously missing something here. Clearly energy efficiency is important for some reason, though I've no idea why that would be?

Sure, when burning fossil fuels and causing global warming (or not - here's not the place to argue that one) energy efficiency is vital. The more you burn the more damage you do.

But the whole point of using hydrogen is that we're running out of fossil fuels. The power for electrolysis will either be solar, wind, tidal or some other renewable source. The only reason we aren't using these directly on cars is that it's not practical so there has to be this extra step.

As far as I'm aware solar energy is not in any danger of running out so efficiency is less of an issue.

Finally...

[surfcow]

Finally ... the VW Rabbit can live up to it's name.

"Ew... there's little rabbit pellets all over your garage."

"Yeah, they do that."

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Putting this in perspective...

[AstroSurf]

I read about a pilot project in Berlin in which municipal busses were being operated on hydrogen. The hydrogen was said to be stored on the busses as powdered hydride that got converted back to hydrogen somewhere in the fuel line between tank and engine.

It was said that an accident that would pierce the fuel tank would be like dropping a make-up compact.

This project (and my reading about it) happened in the mid-1970s!! Think about it.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[hey]

I totally agree with you. And its our tax dollar that are used to subside this crap.

ah, I see.

[CFD339]

Well, I don't really see but I'm not curious enough to explore the chemistry as to why Oxygen can't be its own Oxidizer.

I'll take your word for it. It just seems like a huge waste in terms of the amount of mass you have to store just to get the fuel out of it.

Re:Ban Friction?

[IpalindromeI]

Sure. Orgasms are the result of an electrochemical process in your brain, resulting from messages sent by your nerve endings. Just figure out a way to send the message without the nerve endings. The main problem with that is that if anyone could just press a button to give themselves an orgasm, society would crumble and we'd soon be extinct.

radiation from coal is scientific nonsense

[taharvey]

Again very poor thinking.

If you just burned nuclear waste you would be burning 100% nuclear material. This would not be a good thing. You would have a 100% nuclear plume of highly radioactive materials settling over the downwind land.

Think about this for one second.

• Average coal in the US only has less than 3 ppm radionuclides, and only 0.5% of that goes up the smoke stack. Leaving only 15 ppb in the air emissions before further dilution as it diffuses in the air.
• Coal is carbon from biological sources. It doesn't have more ppm of natural radionuclides than anything else around you: wood 11.3 ppm, granite countertop 10 ppm, cement 9.3 ppm, wallboard 4 ppm, brick 21 ppm, etc.
• Uranium 238 and other natural radionuclides decay very slowly and aren't very radioactive. It is not I-131!

Buring coal with 15 ppb uranium 238 emissions, is NOT the same thing as burning 100% highly radioactive nuclear waste!

OMG he's burning a wood campfire, think of the radioactive waste going into the air, 3 times more than coal!
Give me a break, put your brain back in and quit reading nuclear industry marketing materials.

Re:radiation from coal is scientific nonsense

[Phanatic1a]

You would have a 100% nuclear plume of highly radioactive materials settling over the downwind land.

So burn it energetically, pulverize it down to atomic diameters, inject it into the stratosphere where it won't settle out. Then it would be "diffuse radioactive material" and you wouldn't worry about it.

Buring coal with 15 ppb uranium 238 emissions, is NOT the same thing as burning 100% highly radioactive nuclear waste!

You have a remarkable ability to restate that which is not under dispute, while ignoring salient points that have been raised.

I hope that continues to work out for you.

Oh No! crushed brick in nuclear waste too?

[taharvey]

So burn it energetically, pulverize it down to atomic diameters, inject it into the stratosphere where it won't settle out. Then it would be "diffuse radioactive material" and you wouldn't worry about it.

Coal started out disfuse, burned disfuse, and settles defuse. Not the same thing. Moreover, highly radioactive nuclear waste isn't the same thing as the slow decay uranium 238 in the natural environment. Furthermore I'm skeptical that there is any scientific or economic merit to "inject it into the stratosphere and it won't settle out"

You have a remarkable ability to restate that which is not under dispute, while ignoring salient points that have been raised.

This is a direct response to your assertion: "But claiming that having it diffused it better than having it concentrated in a readily-handleable form is asinine"

• The radioactive elements in coal are already difuse by nature throughout all things on the planet - which is why they are in coal. Your statement is the same thing as saying: if I take a solid brick (21 ppm radionuclides, 10 time more than coal), and crush it up into powder, I suddenly have nuclear waste!
• The radionuclides in coal are natural low-radiation elements seen in all plants and aminals(where do you think coal come from), and not the highly radioactive isotopes from a reactor.
• The quantity in the emissions is at least 1000 times less than the background radiation from soil, rocks, wood, etc.

If you've got ANY competent scientific basis for the radiation in coal is an environmental or health risk, I'd love to see it (ie not lame marketing from the nuclear industry).

Nobody thinks coal is clean or desirable, but radioactive waste in not one of its problems.

Re:Oh No! crushed brick in nuclear waste too?

[Phanatic1a]

Your statement is the same thing as saying: if I take a solid brick (21 ppm radionuclides, 10 time more than coal), and crush it up into powder, I suddenly have nuclear waste!

It took you a while, but you got my point. The regulations involving nuclear waste do indeed require special treatment for material with that kind of activity level, if it comes from certain sources. But if it comes from other sources, the regulations don't apply, as if the *source* of a radioisotope somehow changed its significance or activity level.

If an industry developed a process that discharged as a waste product the *same* amount and type of radioisotopes that exist within a 70kg adult male, that industry would not be allowed to burn that waste, or simply bury it in a landfill. But the funerary and crematory industries aren't affected by those regulations, by legislative fiat.

*That's* my entire fucking *point*.

Nobody thinks coal is clean or desirable, but radioactive waste in not one of its problems.

I think the radiological hazards are insignificant compared to the other pollution output. But if you think distributing thousands of tons of U-235 and decay products through the earth's atmosphere doesn't kill a few people here or there, I think you're crazy.

Re:Oh No! crushed brick in nuclear waste too?

[taharvey]

The regulations involving nuclear waste do indeed require special treatment for material with that kind of activity level, if it comes from certain sources. But if it comes from other sources, the regulations don't apply, as if the *source* of a radioisotope somehow changed its significance or activity level.

Ahh, but they are not the same radioisotopes are they? U238 != highly radioactive U234, U235, plutonium, cesium, ruthenium, iodine, krypton and strontium. While both radioactive they are not the same things. Its like saying 10 volts is as dangerous as 100,000 volts.

But if you think distributing thousands of tons of U-235 and decay products through the earth's atmosphere doesn't kill a few people here or there, I think you're crazy.

If you pulverize 1000s of tons of bricks and sprinkle brick dust around do you think that people will die of radiation? No, of course not. By burning coal you haven't made any more radioactive material that wasn't already there. Fission actually produces radioactive material that previously didn't exist!

With houses made of bricks (21 ppm radioisotopes) and wood (11 ppm), you honestly think an extra ppb, (maybe ppt by the time get to your house) is going change the background radiation? The health effects of nuclear material != linear with exposure, at some point near background levels its drops to zero.

I think the radiological hazards are insignificant compared to the other pollution output.

Right. In fact there is NO radiation hazard, but this is used as a distraction from the many problems with the nuclear power industry.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[malex23]

I'm largely pro-nuclear, but I'll accept that the Greens resistance to nuclear power is "incoherent" when we have a safe means of getting rid of (and I mean really getting rid of) nuclear waste.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[malex23]

What if you wished to burn off all your hair? Makes no difference to me. I just don't think that urban design should be based around the assumption that everyone needs their own car. Walkable neighborhoods and convienent public transportation should be available for everyone in dense population areas, and hydrogen or hybrid cars make a good option for everyone else.

If you're that terribly attached to your internal combusion engine, that's your own business, but I wouldn't expect keeping them fueled to be this cheap forever.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[malex23]

The word is "polluting". There is no such word as "pollutive" when you use it you reveal yourself to be a stupid fuck. And if you're a stupid fuck who can't master English then why should anyone listen to what you have to say?

I have no idea. Clearly your brilliant use of Spelling Flame Technique has discredited me to the core of my being. And yet, for some reason you continue...

How about this little doozie from Jeremy Rifkin:

Oh good. You're quoting a Luddite. Well played sir! Way to nail that barn side!
Googling this quote only leads to a bunch of Ann Ryndian blog sites, but nothing in it's original context. You'll have to forgive me if I'm too much of a Stupid Fuck to conclude that there couldn't be anything more to his argument (however misguided) than freedom-hatery.

Let's face it, if someone invented a clean and cheap source of energy tomorrow there would be two losers, the fossil fuels industry and environmental groups.

Right, right... the same way Amnesty International would lose if all governments abandoned torture.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's only the 8th and I've already exhaused this month's supply of sarcasm.

Powdered Water

[Anonymous Coward]

method binds hydrogen to a pellet ... While bound in this medium no hydrogen loss occurs, enabling hydrogen to be stored cheaply for indefinite periods

And I thought powdered water was just another silly idea I read about in a sci-fi book. Maybe it isn't so silly after all.

FYI: book=Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series (vol 1, I think).

??? -- Fusion -- Solar -- Fossil

[Trinition]

Actually, we have been using stored fusion energy which was delivered as solar radiation.

And where did the fusion energy come from? GRavitational force of the solar atoms own masses compressing themselves together? But where did the energy released when two nuclei merge come from? The big bang? And where did that come from?

Ammonia and hydrogen in a tablet? METHLAB, anyone?

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Is the DEA really going to allow this product into the hands of consumers? Sounds like a powerful, yet easy to handle reducing agent. Just what you need to convert Sudafed into meth or sassafras oil into ecstacy...

Red tape?

[taharvey]

Nuclear power is more expensive than renewables because the regulatory regime it operates under *makes it* more expensive.

This just a myth.

The nuclear power industry has benefited from more governmental help and subsidies than all the other energy technologies put together. 95% of the DOE research budget has gone to nuclear, and once you throw in all the subsidies, government sponsored waste manage programs, insurance coverage, loan guarantees, cleanup, etc, etc... the US government by some estimates has dumped $1 trillion into nuclear over the last 50 years. And the amazing part? It is still not economically viable!

Meanwhile, renewables with comparatively smaller government help have been beating the pants off nuclear in the free market. With all of its problems, why oh why should we continue to prop it up? Because its a neat science project? Not a good enough reason.

Re:The utopianists don't like clean and cheap ener

[multiplexo]

"freedom-hatery", "pollutive"? Did you go to the same school that George W. Bush did?

Environmental groups would lose if cheap and clean energy became a reality because most of what environmental groups are selling is fear and hysteria. Remove the causes for that fear and hysteria and you remove a lot of their justification, just as George W. Bush and the Neo-cons would lose if Osama bin Laden and the entire membership of Al Qaeda were killed tomorrow. When you motivate people with a boogeyman, whether or not it has some basis in reality (such as the effects of fossil fuel consumption) then the worst thing that can happen to you is to lose that boogeyman. The reason why having governments give up torture would not be a problem for Amnesty International the way that discovering a cheap and clean source of energy would be for the environmental movement is that AI is not a utopianist movement with fascistic tendencies as much of the environmental movement is.

Oh, and it's "Ayn Randian" not "Ayn Ryndian" and you need to review the difference between "it's" the conjunction of "it is" and "its" the posssessive. Here's a question: Given that your spelling and grammar are not much better than George W. Bush's why should anyone assume that you are any more intelligent or knowledgable than he is?