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?

[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?

[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?

[Bohnanza]

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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.

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.

And we shall call these pellets...

[utexaspunk]

COAL!

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...

[nganju]

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

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

[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

[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]

"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.

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*

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

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.

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.

I Wonder

[.tardo.]

If I feed this to my dog, will he fart lightning?

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

[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: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: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!

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: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: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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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)

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

[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

[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:You should be an editor

[imnojezus]

+10 Karma for one comment. I nominate tgd for president of the world.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!!

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.