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Hydrogen Fuel Balls from a Gas Pump?
navalynt writes "New Scientist reports that the Department of Energy has filed a patent for hydrogen fuel balls. From the article 'The proposed glass microspheres would each be a few millionths of a metre (microns) wide with a hollow center containing specks of palladium. The walls of each sphere would also have pores just a few ten-billionths of a metre in diameter.' They are supposedly safe and small enough to be pumped into a fuel tank in the same manner as gasoline."
Isn't is a bit disturbing that the government files patents to prevent us from using stuff that we paid them to invent?
So what happens to all the bits of glass and palladium after it releases its hydrogen load?
I guess ideally, it would get saved somewhere for recycling - but presuming that doesn't happ
en - is it going to be OK to breath microsopic bits of that stuff?
www.sjbaker.org
Well, at least it's got some people THINKING about alternatives. Now, if anything pans out, that is another thing...
True, but every car on the road today in the U.S. (or at least the great, great majority of them) have a fairly substantial mass of palladium already: in the catalytic converter. I'm not sure exactly how much palladium a car would need in order to hold a full charge of hydrogen, but I think if you started recycling the stuff that's in catalytic converters, you'd have a good start towards the amount you'd need to start using it as a hydrogen carrier, at least to start out.
Also, from an environmental standpoint, the fact that it's valuable and rare is probably better than if it were currently cheap, since it keeps it from be being implemented as a throwaway, and creating shortages and problems later on. At least this way, we'll implement the full reclamation cycle from the beginning.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Better not walk on a white sand beach then, it's practically the same thing.
why bother, when any meaningful contributions will succumb so soon to entropy?
:) Nonetheless, I take part. Both in life and Wikipedia.
Heh. That's a pretty reasonable question to ask about life itself
Cheers.
The argument is that hydrogen uses a completely new infrastructure for transport,storage, generation and end user while hybrids only need incremental improvements to battery technology. Hybrids also create the huge distributed electrical storage grid that allows conventional generator capacity to be used more efficiently (in the US, power stations have spare capacity at night in summer because of the need to meet daytime air conditioning load, and this capacity can be used to charge hybrid vehicle batteries. Smart chargers such as the ones already in long term marine use could be remotely controlled to supply current according to spare capacity, meaning that generators can run at constant output.)
Hydrogen is popular, I suspect, because it is a technical fix that appeals to some engineers (gee whiz, new technology) and to the oil industry because they get to retain control over the power infrastructure instead of those boring electrical utilities. Whereas a vehicle economy running mainly on electrical utility power and biofuel would take away a good part of the power over consumers currently enjoyed by Exxon and the like. A farm cooperative could easily produce its own biodiesel and bioethanol with a surplus for sale.
Every time I make this point I get banged on by somebody who claims that the likes of Exxon only do what they do to make shareholders happy. It's good to know that oil industry PR people can not only read but can navigate Slashdot, but at the end of the day a hydrogen economy just hands over too much power to the technocrats, whereas a mixed hybrid electric/biofuel economy leaves far more power in the hands of communities. The shareholders are happy when they can see no way that their monopoly can be challenged or dismantled, because it guarantees a continued revenue flow. If that means distorting markets, they are all for it.
Pining for the fjords
What happens if you inhale these little suckers? You know it will happen. How do they break down over time and how do they break down in a catastrophic accident? Spill cleanup? Do I just vacumn them?
Lots of promise but all the negatives are curiously missing. This sounds more fantasy than real, the old "patent the idea" and then try to make it work.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"hey, wait a minute, why are we spending billions of taxpayer dollars on a technology which will never work in the marketplace, which no one will ever use outside of experimental vehicles?"
Well, it's a great way to LOOK like you are doing something whilst being sure that nothing actually changes. After all, one of the few reasons to use hydrogen is the high energy density per unit mass - binding it to a heavy metal such as palladium removes even this advantage. I strongly suspect that it would be more efficient (not to say much cheaper and simpler) just to have a battery powered car.
Of course, if your average 2-car family converted to one battery powered runaround for short/local trips and one modern diesel for the longer journeys, then you would make some serious fuel savings with minimal/no lifestyle sacrifice. But that would be far too easy..
is that there IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to produce hydrogen efficiently, from a renewable resource, without leaving toxic byproducts
If you're being pedantic about it, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that we are currently aware of to generate electricity from ANY SOURCE without leaving toxic byproducts. Yes, I'm including solar and wind in that.
Who cares if it creates toxic byproducts? As long as we're not pumping them into the atmosphere, I'm okay with that.