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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

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.

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: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.

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: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: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.

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.

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.

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

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.