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New Generation of Hydrogen Fuel Cells Powers Up
An anonymous reader writes "A safer and more practical way of storing and releasing hydrogen, discovered by two Arizona State University researchers, could lead to a new type of fuel cell capable of packing 10 times more energy. The key is apparently using the alkaline compound borohydride — 'a 30% solution of borohydride in water actually contains one-third more hydrogen than the same volume of liquid hydrogen.'"
Wiki has a decent write up on NaBH4 for those interested and mentions the applicability to Fuel Cells.
This is still in the research/development phase as per the article "Dr. Gervasio recognises that there are still many steps between his prototype and a competitively priced, off-the-shelf, battery-sized fuel cell. Nevertheless, he believes they could appear in power-hungry devices such as laptops, camcorders, and radios within five years." So until then, I'll be using CnH2n+2 to mow my lawn.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
curiously all research lost in a massive fire when a gasoline tanker truck collided with the research building, Big Oil was unavailable for comment.
stuff |
No one ever seems to mention this, but you can get some remarkably high energy capacity and relative stability (it's not going to blow up without a trigger) by using hydrogen-carbon compounds.
Maybe I'm just a kook, but some serious work ought to go towards that sort of research, I think.
Ok, I am confused.....or ignorant.
How does a mixture of Borohydride(not pure hydrogen) and Water(which is already only 2/3 hy
drogen) end up being more hydrogen than Liquid Hydrogen? Isn't Liquid Hydrogen pure hydrogen?
If I am ignorant, educate me....but this sorta reminds me of the line from Anchorman:
"60% of the time it works 100% of the time"
Help me understand.
dimes
Within a few years, laptops and other energy-guzzling portable devices could run on long-lasting, easily recharged fuel cells based on a safe and practical new way of storing and releasing hydrogen.
I assumed from the title that this article was about cars, but it turns out to be even more interesting because it's talking about laptops and portable devices instead.
"New Generation of Hydrogen Fuel Cells Powers Up"
I read that first as a new ___ that generages Hydrogen Fuel Cells, and they are about to power it up for the first time! I guess I ought to try that coffee stuff, or maybe drink more of what comes out of fuel cells.
Oh You POS
One of the major things that are holding Hydrogen Fuel Cells back is the fact that it takes more energy to extract the hyrogen from the envrionment then it produces in the fuel cell. So this makes hydrogen more expensive then fossil fuels, as well more of an inpact on the environment (assuming they are using non-green power generation)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Liquid hydrogen is of relatively low density. That's why it has to be under pressure to even be liquid. Water, on the other hand, is solid and fairly dense at room temperature.
I don't know the math behind it, but by starting from something that's naturally denser it seems at least possible to have more hydrogen in it. It'll probably weigh more.
Can anyone spot-check this for sanity?
Although I am not familiar with the chemistry of this research, it is quite possible to pack inordinate amounts of compounds in a solution. For instance, 1 ml (1 g) of water can hold 99 g of the compound used to develop film. The space around molecules in a solution can vary quite a bit, and if the geometries of the solute and solvent match very well to the forces between them, the wasted space can be decreased, increasing the concentration of the solution.
the beauty of fuel cells is that it stores energy and transfers it in a clean(er) fashion- the statement that it takes more energy to extract hydrogen from the environment is a misleading factor when one considers that you could use solar, wind, hydro, thermal, etc... to generate electricity, through electrolysis create hydrogen, and thus store and transport energy.
How does a mixture of Borohydride(not pure hydrogen) and Water(which is already only 2/3 hy
drogen) end up being more hydrogen than Liquid Hydrogen? Isn't Liquid Hydrogen pure hydrogen?
They're saying there's more Hydrogen in the mixture per unit volume then pure hydrogen. So I'm guessing (most likely incorrectly) that their substance has a higher density then liquid hydrogen. Higher density => More 'Stuff' per volume => More Hydrogen.
Course I could be wrong.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Liquid H2 is not very dense at all. It's density is .068 g/mL (compared to water, which is 1 g/mL). When the borohydride is added to water, you get NaBO2 and 4 H2 molecules.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
They're probably figuring it on a volumetric basis. Liquid hydrogen is not very dense (71 g/l). I would imagine this solution would be greater than water (1000 g/l). In a mobile application the volume of the fuel would be very important, and storing LH2 is non-trivial due to the temperatures and pressures involved.
Water, on the other hand, is solid and fairly dense at room temperature.
Can anyone spot-check this for sanity?
I dont know about you, but room temperature around here is a bit more then 0C, so 'round here our water is in it's liquid form at room temperature.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
You're missing a piece. Liquid hydrogen is hard to store (and expensive), and handle.* That's why most hydrogen storage cells store the gas in some kind of metal hydride matrix.
*There's also the safety factor especially in the case of an accident.
I don't like the sound of water sloshing around in my laptop to be quite honest.. although i guess it could be useful for watercooling the cpus.
I'm not immediately familiar with the stuff in question, but I'n guessing it's a simple matter of densities. You're dumping a solid powder made up of slightly complicated molecules into a liquid made of very simple molecules. The density of that solid is likely quite a bit higher than that of water or liquid hydrogen.
If it can't be taken on an airplane, it will never gain widespread acceptance, and if I can't take bottled water through security, they sure as hell aren't going to allow this.
Who cares about how much hydrogen you can get into a given volume. It should be all about energy per volume. It will be great when someone notices the energy density of hydrogen atoms attached to carbon chains - i.e. hydrocarbons. Oh wait...
Look up (MCEL) Millenium Cell, They've been doing this for awhile. I believe the chemistry for this has been around a while too lazy to look it up tho. Platinum Catylitic mesh, and Borohydride The fuelcellstore has a nice little generator --G
When work feels overwhelming, remember that you're going to die.
I believe this article is talking about the technology described here:
http://tinyurl.com/fa3oj (Science Direct)
The original research paper states "The proposed fuel-cell system offers applications longevity owing to its more concentrated (up to 10 wt% H2) hydrogen storage than found with H2 stored under common tank pressures or in typical metal hydrides."
Is the storage of liquid hydrogen considered a "common tank pressure"? I wouldn't think so. The big deal about this technology is that it stores the hydrogen in a very safe, room temperature, inert and non-flamable liquid until the instant it passes into the fuel cell.
"The down side to either hydrogen-boride or ammonia is that they're not energy sources in themselves, but function (like a battery) as a convenient way to store energy."
The same could be said for all indirect energy sources.*
*Except for geothermal.
Great auto analogy mapped onto a chemistry experiment!
"The researchers can now run the hydrogen generator on a 15% solution of borohydride, half-way to their goal of a truly power-packed 30% solution."
Half a solution? Not 10X but would disrupt LiOn market at the promising 10X potential.
Anyone want to explain the difference between this apparent wet technology and LiOn dry storage technology?
Google Chrysler Natrium. A company (www.milleniumcell.com) has had the catalyst needed to release hydrogen from sodium boro-hydride for a couple of years. Just tie it to a fuel cell and off you go. It's the only sane way to deal with Hydrogen. That being said, the only sane way to make lots of hydrogen is nuclear and a little solar.
It is possible to design nuclear plants to preform electrolysis on the off-hours when the load is low. What does a nuclear power plant do? Boils lots of water. When the load is low, they can run the extra current directly thru the water that was just boiled. Yes, it is not the most efficient power conversion, but we have so much nuclear fuel available why not use it? Sometime in the future we will figure out what to do with the waste. We are a smart race. Worse case we can just launch it into the sun or in a trajectory pointing away from our planet.
Is nuclear that bad? We have known the properties of the splitting atom for decades now... we should have a good understanding of how to utilize this abundant resource. The waste is manageable. Is the waste of a coal plant manageable? Once you spew all that C0_2 and other by-products into the atmosphere there is no (sane) way to recapture it.
Nuclear is our future. Give in to our nuclear overlords.
When combined with water, NaBH4 produces 4H and NaBO2. How difficult is NaBO2 to deal with, and can it be dangerous/toxic? Any chemistry people want to share any info on this byproduct?
So, it contains 33% more hydrogen but it ends up being 1000% more energy?
I don't get it.
...should the day Dell announce another battery recall on their new hydrogen-powered laptops ever arrive, I'll be the first to run for the hills.
throw new NoSignatureException();
I'm still waiting for previous generation to be available as laptop battery.
:wq
Liquid Hydrogen is not very dense. The attractive forces that pull it together to form a liquid are weak and only effective a low temperatures. When hydrogen forms molecules its electron tends to migrate towards other atoms slightly increasing the size of that atom's electron shells. A hydrogen atom shrinks right down to its nucleus, not the next smaller shell, since there are no other elcetrons to form shells when it loses its elctron. It takes 779 ml of liquid oxygen and 1586 ml of liquid hydrogen to make a liter of water. Hydrogen is a special case, even with inner shells left, binding forces can lead to higher densities. A liter of Aluminum oxide weighs 3.973 kg of which 1.905 kg is Oxygen. That same 1.905kg of oxygen in liquid form occupies a volume of 1.671 liters.
In the article, they state the energy density of this new fuel is 600 watt hours / litre, with the goal of eventually getting it up to 2200.
According to wikipedia, gasoline has an energy density of 32 megajoules per litre, which if I did the conversion right, comes out to about 8890 watt hours / litre. This sounds like a big difference until you consider that gas engines are typically somewhere around %20-30 efficient. It appears they may some day make a fuel that's roughly equivalent to gasoline.
The article is about new hydrogen storage technology and not new fuel cells ...
http://tinyurl.com/9l6os
ExxonMobil Australia chairman Mark Nolan used his speech to the Asia Pacific oil and gas conference in Adelaide today to debunk the theory of peak oil, which suggests oil supplies have peaked and will dwindle over the next 20 years.
NASA scientists are about to publish conclusive studies showing abundant methane of a non-biologic nature is found on Saturn's giant moon Titan, a finding that validates a new book's contention that oil is not a fossil fuel.
We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.
It uses ruthenium. Ruthenium runs about 175 USD/ounce. Ruthenium is a member the cateogry called "precious metals". It's a rather limited supply item. Given it's other uses I wouldn't expect to see these things be inexpensive. Also menas it will be unlikely to be viable for larger scale applications such as automotive, residential, or commercial power requirements. Still, it is kinda cool.
There is also the question of lifespan and cycling. While the liter of fluid requirement can be worked around, long term issues such as cleanliness of the proces with regards to catalyst maintenance. I'd be cautios about using the phrase "halfway there" just becuase they are using half the percentage of solution they are looking for. While they are at 15% vs 30%, they are also at 600Wh versus the 2200 claimed in the article. Granted, that's theortical maximum, but the effective use of 30% solution is also theoretical.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Nobody does it like Molten Boron!
So I'm curious: After reading about this stuff on Wikipedia, it says:
"Borax can be hydrogenated back into borohydride fuel by several different techniques, some of which require nothing more than water and electricity or heat. These techniques are still in active development."
It seems that when the Borohydride fuel is used up, you are left with Borax, which you can buy at the grocery store.
So how exactly does one hyrdogenate Borax to turn it back into Borohydride fuel? Because it would be way cool if my car just had a tank full of borax, and every night I got home I filled up a separate water tank and plugged it into the house current to convert the Borax back into Borohydride for the next day's commute.
How do you convert Borax into Borohydride?
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Liquid hydrogen is of relatively low density. That's why it has to be under pressure to even be liquid.
Ignoring the solid-water gaffe (assuming your air-conditioning simply isn't turned down too low...)
Liquid hydrogen has to be cold. It's not like, say, propane or butane which will liquefy under pressure even at room temperature - liquid hydrogen's boiling point is sufficiently low that if you pressurise the gas at room temperature, all you get is a pressurised gas.
Useful for storing smaller quantities of hydrogen in a safe manner, but for petrol-competitive amounts you need to vastly increase the density. By cooling it, and letting it liquefy. This does mean that insulated, non-actively-cooled tanks of liquid hydrogen have to vent what boils off - if it was completely sealed, then you'd end up with a tank of ridiculously high-pressure hydrogen gas. Liquid nitrogen does something similar, although you don't have the problem of venting a flammable gas with a container filled with liquid nitrogen...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
This is is an article on how it is created:
http://www.millenniumcell.com/fw/main/How_it_Work
But do we really think big oil is going to let this happen?
This is actually a very interesting question. Let's see if I can get this right:
Each atom has positively charged nucleus and a bunch of electrons, so the whole thing is neutral. The more electrons we have the bigger the attraction force. Thus, while the diameter of the atom grows with element number it does so only slowly and one can consider atom size to be roughly constant - especially for elements like H, O, B.
What determines the volume of the liquid is then the size of the molecules composing it - and a molecule like H2O has some parts of the electron shells overlapping.
However, in case of pure hydrogen it is so light that besides pure electrostatic repulsion one also has uncertainty principle - the mass of H2 is so small that it cannot be within a very small volume or it would have to possess a large momentum (and thus be very hot).
If I am right it would mean that deuterium would have 40% less volume for the same number of atoms as hydrogen - but I don't have a ready reference - crosscheck anyone ?
I've sat next to more than my fair share of passengers that managed to smuggle "methane" of board the aircraft.
{...shhh!, not everybody got that....}
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Uh, I'm not so sure that this is entirely new. Maybe the antifreeze additive is new....
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Your article didn't say how to convert the waste Borax back into Sodium Borohydride.
i b1_wu.pdf#search=%22how%20to%20make%20Sodium%20bor ohydride%22
I did find an article that is somewhat useful here:
http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/progress04/ii
But it is a bit over my head technically. It sounds like you do some kind of electrolysis to convert back to Borohydride.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
If the 30% solution of borohydride (by mass) has the same density as water (which is not true) then you have .30 g of NaBH4 per mL of solution.
.108 g of hydrogen in it. So you have .032 g of H per mL of solution.
.064 g of H2 per mL of solution.
Each gram of NaBH4 of has
You get 1 *molecule* of H2 from each atom of H in the original compound. So you multiply the mass of by 2. This gives you
The density of liquid H2 is ~0.68, so that is where the magic number of 30% comes from.
The reaction is: NaBH4 + 2 H20 -> NaBO2 + 4 H2
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
I found this link: http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/borohydride-alkalin e-solutions/ which talks about this process being developed and ready for use at the end of the year. In the article from January 16, 2006 talks about Medis Technologies having a disposable product which is expected to sell for under $20 and will provide ~30 hours of cell phone power or ~60 hours of MP3 player power.
Interesting, so how efficient will the new engines be? Your statement as written seems to contemplate an 80% efficient hydro engine comparing favorably with a worst-case 20% efficient petrol engine...this sounds kind of unrealistic.
http://www.ectechnic.co.uk/hgen.html
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Pyromage lives in Siberia, you insensitive clod!
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Hydrogen storage has been a big obstacle to its usefulness as a fuel. I can picture a filling station that exchanges your spent borohydride solution for fresh borohydride and recharging the spent borohydride. You could also have a home or built-in recharger running off household electricity. Eventually we could eliminate half the filling stations, adding electricity generating capacity. This could have further effects of reducing city pollution making them more attractive residences. This can lead to less dependence on oil respiratory distress, shorter commutes, less traffic, less energy consumption and. I
...will *NEVER* allow you to have ready access to stuff like NaBH4, LiAlH4 (LAH) or anything else that can be used as a powerful and selective reducing agent for use in fuel cells. We're lucky that lithium batteries themselves haven't already been completely outlawed. Drug cops are already furious over the prospect of hydrogen-fueled vehicles. Mere possesion of anhydrous ammonia is already a felony in most states unless you're a farmer or a licensed chemist.
We need a way to safely harvest methane hydrates. Solve that question, you'll be *rich*. Screw up, another extinction event! Good times!
I figured this would mention bigger applications like cars/tranportation, but they seem to studiously avoid that obvious question. So is there a reason this technology wouldn't scale up?
I am amused at how these eggheads predict huge efficiencies in theory , but say in practice they haven't quite achieved current technology.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Hasn't anyone read this book? All these "deux ex machina" fantasy technologies depend heavily on an existing oil-based economy. Won't work guys. Learn to ride a horse.
Remember, all matter (at least, outside of a neutron star) is almost entirely empty space. Its density is controlled by how the electrons interact with one another and with the nuclei -- that's what keeps everything from collapsing into black holes. As the atomic number increases (the nuclei have more protons, and thus more positive charge) the electrostatic forces pull the electrons into tighter orbits, and, other things being equal, you get a denser material.
That's the very simple explanation -- there are other factors that affect density, like molecular conformation and crystal structure -- but it makes the point. It's all about the electrons.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
You are not right. In many ways.
1. The density of a liquid is dependent not only on the size of the molecules in it, but on their mass, and on the space between them (that's why hot water is less dense than cold water - on average there is more space between hot water molecules than cold).
2. Atomic size is not constant. It does change (not monotonically) with atomic number. You can see how here: Atom radii.
3. ALL molecules have "overlapping" electronic orbitals if you mean that the atoms are sharing some electrons between them - that's what makes them molecules. Not sure what your point is here.
4. Deuterium has about the same atomic volume as hydrogen (where'd you get 40% less?) but the atomic mass is naturally about doubled (1 proton +1 neutron vs 1 proton - and almost all the mass is in the nucleus), thus the density of D2 is twice that of H2.
5. The density difference between D2 and H2 is of no practical value for fuel cells. It'd be worse to use D2 since it's heavier and the increased density comes from the nuclei, not from an increased number of atoms per volume. And you're not getting energy out of the nucleus but out of the rearrangement of chemical (electronic) bonds. At least until we start talking about nuclear-powered cars. Then count me in!
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
is not the first hydrogen powered car, but the first hydrogen powered car accident.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
> Theoretically, this could achieve an energy density up to about 2200 watt-hours per litre...
> compared to 200 watt-hours per litre for a lithium polymer battery.
Quick, anyone --what's the energy density of gasoline, for comparison?
1. The density of a liquid is dependent not only on the size of the molecules in it, but on their mass, and on the space between them (that's why hot water is less dense than cold water - on average there is more space between hot water molecules than cold).
Yes - I was assuming that temperature is fixed and very low (as needed to liquify hydrogen.
2. Atomic size is not constant. It does change (not monotonically) with atomic number. You can see how here: Atom radii.
Yes - but slowly. Thank your for the link, it is actually closer than I thought: r_H=53pm, r_B=87pm, r_O=48pm.
This is as opposed to increasing the radius proportionately to the cubic root of the atom number.
3. ALL molecules have "overlapping" electronic orbitals if you mean that the atoms are sharing some electrons between them - that's what makes them molecules. Not sure what your point is here.
What I meant is that the volume of the molecule is smaller than sum of volumes of individual atoms. In particular, I would expect oxygen to strip the electron from the hydrogen completely so that the size of the molecule would be not much larger than the size of a single oxygen atom.
4. Deuterium has about the same atomic volume as hydrogen (where'd you get 40% less?) but the atomic mass is naturally about doubled (1 proton +1 neutron vs 1 proton - and almost all the mass is in the nucleus), thus the density of D2 is twice that of H2.
Actually I was wrong - by that reasoning the volume should be smaller almost by a factor of 3 (2^1.5), however I would expect electrostatic repulsion to kick in before this factor is reached.
5. The density difference between D2 and H2 is of no practical value for fuel cells. It'd be worse to use D2 since it's heavier and the increased density comes from the nuclei, not from an increased number of atoms per volume. And you're not getting energy out of the nucleus but out of the rearrangement of chemical (electronic) bonds. At least until we start talking about nuclear-powered cars. Then count me in!
That was just an example. I thought by density we meant energy content per volume, not per unit of mass ? Since for a car mass is of lesser concern than volume. As for nuclear powered cars - me too :)
I dont know about you, but room temperature around here is a bit more then 0C, so 'round here our water is in it's liquid form at room temperature.
Exactly. Water is actually more dense in liquid form than solid form.
I'm not disputing that, I'm saying Water is rarely solid at 'room temperature'.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Even water by itself has more hydrogen per volume than liquid hydrogen does. At 20 K, liquid hydrogen has a density of only 0.071 grams/ml. (Water has a density of 1 gram/ml, so has a hydrogen density of 0.11 grams/ml.) IANAP (I am not a physicist), but I've been told that the very low density is caused by quantum mechanical effects. In fact, liquid hydrogen is so light, that under high enough pressure, you can get is to float above gaseous helium.
Well, it's relatively solid, compared to its gaseous form (and hydrogen is a gas at normal room temperature/pressure).
It may be cool there, but temperatures are still well above freezing.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
how many times are they going to say we have a new fuel cell its drivig me nuts i meen come on!!!!
I misread the OP. Nothing to see here. Move along.
So, why don't we have factories hauling in biomass and pumping out oil? Do you have any links? I'd like to learn a bit more about these conversion processes.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Ugh, another article about our "hydrogen future."
Hydrogen is such a 'pie in the sky' technology. It costs too much to make hydrogen, it's expensive to store and the infrastructure is non-existant. Even with this new technology, hydrogen costs more to make and loses more energy than any other fuel out there.
Not only that, but there is already a proven alternative. Electric cars have the infrastructure (power outlets), are more efficient than either oil or hydrogen, and there is far less pollution using power from the grid than burning oil or making hydrogen with current methods.
Anyone who wants to know the truth needs to look at California. Back in the 1990s, California forced major car companies to make a choice... either make EVs or you can't sell cars in California. The auto companies made electric cars that were fast, looked good and could go 120 miles on a charge. Thousands of people wanted them. Instead of selling the cars, the auto companies leased them, then joined oil companies to lobby California politicians to cancel the EV mandate.
Andrew Card, former GM lobbyist and Bush Chief of Staff acted as a plaintiff against the State of California, attempting to sue the state for pushing the EV mandate. A few years later, the Department of Justice under the Bush administration filed an amicus brief supporting GM and other automakers. The automakers were very clear, they didn't want to make electric cars... so much so they even took back and crushed every EV they leased.
To replace EVs, Bush presented the new "Hydrogen Economy." He gave $1.2 billion of taxpayer money to car makers just to research the technology. This article is no doubt part of that research.
Hydrogen is of course 10 to 15 years away... suspiciously convenient for auto-manufacters and oil companies who don't want electric cars. So my conclusion is that, everything you see on TV, everything you see on the web about hydrogen, it's all just a big charade to distract people away from electric cars.
Good discussion and movie:
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic8972.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSBykAngDpY
Diesel exhaust is a known human carcinogen.
l exhaust/dieselhealtheffects.html6 09.html
http://www1.umn.edu/eoh/hazards/hazardssite/diese
http://www.cdc.gov/eLCOSH/docs/d0600/d000609/d000
Everyone likes to think they have the answer. Your's is rich in carbon AND causes cancer.
And my refutation rhymed too.
Actually, you mean critical point: the boiling point is actually a line in the phase diagram, where liquid turns to gas at a particular pressure; critical point marks the maximum temperature where there is a phase transition between liquid and gas, i.e. above which there is no boiling point!
Hydrogen's critical temperature is 33 K, it's boiling point at 1 atm is 20.3 K.
Can't anybody think of Greenpeace?
They have a born-given right to protest for everything that is ever sold!
However, I think they will find something here to bitch about, too.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
They were thrown up by the US government to distract people from the battery advances that have been coming through and to give the oil companies another 15 years. There are batteries here now which'll charge in 15 mins, drive a car 200 miles or so and last three quarters of a million miles.
Hydrogen fuel cells, filling stations simply don't make sense in comparison.
Deleted
It appears they may some day make a fuel that's roughly equivalent to gasoline.
It's called food. "They" are nature rather than science in the case of food. The human body is very good at turning food into useful energy. While I'm all for new, less environmentally destructive fuels, I am also a commuter who rides a bicycle daily. My coworkers burn a gallon or so of gas to get to and from work in stop-and-go traffic slightly faster than my average speed. With the downside of getting sweaty or rained on aside, I am more efficient on a 50 cent grapefruit and a cup of cheapy-cheapy coffee than they are on a $3 gallon of gas.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
is that after reading the article and the comments, our brains committed suicide. Christ on a cross, people get funded for wastes of time like this, and friends of mine cant get a dime for research. Ill say this, this 'technology' is going nowhere. Hell, Ill save them the catalyst and use lithium aluminum hydride. Any chemistry student worth their salt remembers that H:- donor + H2O = H2 and OH. Been known for a very long time. Borohydride is more stable, and cheaper than the aluminum hydrides (hence the catalyst), but for god sakes, its still expensive (2 kilos is about 500 bucks) and I doubt that they can find a way regenerate in situ. Great way of making H2 on the spot, but not in any fashion where you need to recharge your supply quickly. /rant
Fun map of the Arctic, with links to weather measurements.
Nobody does it like Molten Boron!
I believe the correct Futurama quote is: 'Nobody doesn't like molten boron.'
It's a play on the 'Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee' slogan/jingle used to hawk Sara Lee pastries.
See Automotive News, August 21, 2006, page 4: US dealers are charged up about selling Chinese electric vehichles. Imported by Miles Automotive Group, built by Tianjin-Qingyuan Electric Vehicle Co. They will use lithium-ion batteries, go 80 mph and have a range of at least 200 miles. The 4 door version will be available in 2008. $27,000 A low speed version is "available now". It sounds like a modified golf cart. 200 miles will cover most usage. If you want to leave town rent a gas buggy.
Brazil is a special case - a middle-income country with a huge agricultural export sector and a climate suitable for growing sugar cane, which is where all the ethanol comes from. What it does can't be replicated in the United States, Europe, or most importantly China and India.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)