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New Hydrogen Storage Technique
pwp writes to mention that researchers at the University of New Brunswick are reporting they have found a new method of storing hydrogen gas. The new method is able to condense hydrogen gas into a usable solid under mild conditions. "Hydrogen gas is typically stored under pressure in large metal cylinders, approximately four feet high. These cylinders are heavy and expensive to transport. Since they are under pressure, they also pose a safety hazard. 'We've reached a milestone with our ability to condense hydrogen into a usable solid,' said Dr. McGrady. 'The next step is to produce a safe, compact storage system for the compound that is both lightweight and affordable.' The research is expected to produce reversible hydrogen storage materials that can be processed into a powder for use in limitless commercial applications."
This article has absolutly vague information on what research they are doing. Storing hydrogen as a solid, apparetly as a powder? What would be interesting is to see how much energy is lost in the chemical reactions of reacting hydrogen with whatever they react it with and then changing it back into hydrogen gas. I would also like to see how this compares to the energy required to compress hydrogen as it is currently done. This is what will determine this technologies usefulness in reality.
Only nine percent hydrogen by weight is success? How much fuel will it waste in transportation if there is nine times as much "pakaging" material as there is hydrogen. Yes the currently used hydrogen cylinders are heavy, but I do not believe they weigh nine times as much as they can carry.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
i know i'm a pizza delivery boy but since i'm on slashdot i know this defies everything i learned in my high school chemistry class. there is no way this can work and the scientists are just giving us false hope for a government grant!
This article reads like the typical press release aimed to stir up grant money and venture capitalists. Too bad that UNB doesn't have a stock ticker symbol.
Somebody feel free to submit the details about this when they're released.
Assuming the energy needed to perform the condensation is not lossy, this technique is going to be da bomb. :)
Haha. But seriously, this is what the "hydrogen economy" needs. You could even grind the powder fine enough to be a slough, and 'pump' that into your vehicle's fuel tank.
When George Bush first proposed hydrogen as the solution to our fossil-fuel habit, everyone mocked him for failing to understand that hydrogen is just a storage medium, rather than an energy source. I suspect he knew that all along... but since most Americans don't know it, he persuaded them to (at least in principle) buy in to the idea.
Once there is enough interest in hydrogen, the "hydrogen economy" will indeed take off (e.g. today's breakthrough), and at that time we will be groping for a way to produce hydrogen in bulk. The optimal way to produce bulk hydrogen is of course a nuclear reactor. And so by this (alas necessarily) indirect route will Americans come to accept ubiquitous nuclear power. And that is exactly what Bush wanted (or at least should have wanted) all along.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Does anyone know anything about this, besides it's the same sort of thing we've been reading about for years. (Dissolving Hydrogen into another substance then realsing it at will).
Is there something different here? What materials are they using. Is 9% actually a GOOD number?
The research is expected to produce reversible hydrogen storage materials that can be processed into a powder
Just add water for a delicious instant beverage.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
It's hard to say since the article is so light on the details, but DTU --the Danish equivalent of MIT-- demonstrated hydrogen in pellet form something like two years ago.
One would do something I do not recall (perhaps pour water or an electric current over them?) to release the hydrogen, but otherwise they were inert. (I don't know what happened to that technology since, however.)
"Good news, everyone!"
Solid Hydrogen? I can't wait to heat my house with this stuff. Nothing like a fire made of Hydrogen logs.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
This is just a press release... I should release one that I'v put together a team of crack scientist to solve the transmutation of lead into gold... And watch the fringe investment backers start calling and asking how much to get on board...
n ance, etc..) that will make everything until now look like peanuts!
If they were REALLY this close to this big of a milestone, then why did they secure 3.3 MILLION $$$ of investment... Nothing personal, But something like that should be 300+Million or some such. Or Maybe 2 Billion from China... etc.. etc.. Because the REAL economical & viable conversion of hydrogen to a solid and back, is the NEXT big step for ALL of our civilization(s). (yes, we lower crustations want in on it also...) THAT will make the next global market (transport/fuel/production/payment/support/mainte
Continuting ideas: end war, space exploration, chemistry discoveries, cheap food, cleaner water (all that nasty hydrogen has finally been removed) etc..etc..etc..
I say "snake oil" on this one...
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Danm I love this joint!
May the Maths Be with you!
"Well son, throw another hydrogen log on the fire and I'll tell you all about that time me and Will Smith stopped the alien invasion with nothing but a pocket calculator. Those where the days!"
9% hydrogen by weight?
That sounds familiar, water is only 11% hydrogen by weight, but nobody seems to have cared about that when they wanted to use water as a base fuel for cold fusion.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
But yes, even 9% is better than curent gas storage, which is much less than 5% hydrogen by weight. The DOE target for 2010 is 6%. And even then you'd be about five times the volume using compressed gas for a given amout of hydrogen.
-Ryan C.
http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR07/Event/59811
extracted:
Investigation of the Direct Hydrogenation of Aluminum to Alane in Supercritical Fluids
Alane, AlH$_{3}$ has many of the properties that are requisite for materials to be considered viable for onboard hydrogen storage applications. Most notibly, it contains 10.1 wt{\%} hydrogen and undergoes dehydrogenation at appreciable rates at temperatures below 100$^{\circ}$C. However, the very low, $\ge $ 6 kJ/mol, enthalpy of dehydrogenation of AlH$_{3}$ prohibits subsequent re-hydrogenation through standard gas-solid techniques except at very high pressures or very low temperatures. The extremely low solubility of gaseous H$_{2}$ in conventional organic solvents also vitiates a solution-based approach. Re-hydrogenation of Al using a supercritical fluid potentially offers a workable approach since the fluid can act as a solvent, at the same time remaining completely miscible with permanent gases like hydrogen. Recently, it has been found that mixtures of NaH and Al can be hydrogenated to sodium alanate, NaAlH$_{4}$ under modest pressures and temperatures in supercritical fluids. We have now extended these studies to the hydrogenation of Al to AlH$_{3}$. The results of these studies and experimental details will be reported.
(The important question is now the energetic cost of preparing alane by this method, which
impacts the efficiency of using alane-derived hydrogen as a fuel.
I have a method of storing condensed methane gas. It's not 100% safe (ask my dog) but nobody has died from it, yet.
If there is a residue, then it's a new Storage Container, and not a Usable Solid. If that's the case, then it needs to be easily rechargeable/refillable, quickly rechargeable/refillable, cheaply rechargeable/refillable, safely rechargeable/refillable/transportable, and provide good energy density for its overall weight and volume.
Does this system meet all these requirements? Hard to tell.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The tongue-in-cheek summary shortcut post.
And the wiseass respone to same.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Hydrogen would normally be H(2) in stable form. Water is H(2)O. How would adding water to 'powdered hydrogen' produce water?
My blog
"The next step is to produce a safe, compact storage system for the compound that is both lightweight and affordable."
Oh, so you mean, all we have to do now is figure out a way to store hydrogen that's safe, compact, lightweight, and affordable? Well hell, son, why didn't you say so? Our troubles are over!
You're correct. H2 does not have a solid phase anywhere near STP.
The article is just plain wrong, as they are not condensing hydrogen into a solid. In fact, technically, condensation occurs whe you transition from gas to liquid. gas to solid would, of course, be deposition, and liquid to solid would be solidification.
Combine it with oxygen and store the result it in the liquid form. It's safe to transport, easy to pipe around a vehicle or power plant, and gets you somthing like 10% H mass
Cue Grammar Nazi...Damn I love this joint!
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
Can we have less free advertising (i.e. press releases) and more articles that are actually informative? I know it's asking a lot... but come on, man!
Mmmm.... Hydrogenated water...
/Homer J. Simpson
Here is an idea: create a chain of about 8 carbon atoms and attach 18 hydrogen atoms to this carbon chain. That is about 16% hydrogen by weight! Not only that, it is an easy to handle liquid at normal temperatures and pressures. Imagine simply pouring a liquid into your car for refueling!
http://www.biofuels.fsnet.co.uk/sustain.htm .0092 ratio... that's uh, less than 1/100th or 100 times as much packing material....
Typically, a 1460 x 230 mm K size industrial gas cylinder weighs 65kg and holds 7.2 cubic metres of hydrogen, which has to be compressed at 175 bar (c. 2500 psi) - a convenient size and weight (same as a 50 litre fuel tank) for one cylinder to fit into a car, but the actual weight of the hydrogen is only 0.6kg.
hmmm... 65kg/.6kg
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Ye Gods!
... Errr, OK; you mean ICE?
TFA is *very* short on details but, as far as I can determine, they have nothing more than a (slightly) more efficient gas/metal adsorbtion method.
To illustrate *how* short on detail it is, take the quote "The way to do this is to turn hydrogen into a compound -- a solid -- so you can use it when you want, safely, in the amount you want."
Hydrogen aDsorbtion (which means sticking to the surface of, rather than being pulled into the structure of (aBsorbtion) onto metals) has been known about for a very long time. Using these techniques does do away with the classical problems of storing hydrogen cryogenically (cold, volatility and risk of explosion) but for a *huge* cost of energy-density/weight ratio. So much so that it isn't really worth the effort. Even if they have achieved a ten-fold improvement over traditional (titanium) adsorbtion methods, it wouldn't be nearly enough to be viable consumer level energy requirements.
I'm a student of UNB. I'm very excited that my university is working on this kind of research. Dr. McGrady is making a guest lecture to my chemistry class.
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
Don't you mean just as oxygen for a delicious instant beverage?
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Hydrogen can also be very effiently stored when converted to a liquid. The liquid is 2/3rds hydrogen, extremely compact, converts to a solid at lower tempratures and best of all is not flamable. You just need to bond two hydrogen atoms with a single oxegen atom. I will be filing a patent on this idea so no stealing!
everyone says,
using oil is changing the balance of the carbon cycle, by releasing carbon that was tucked away under the earth millions of years ago.....
how does using borax change the "hydrogen" cycle?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This has been in work a while (from 2005):
I D=000BCFA2-450E-1289-837D83414B7FFE9F
2 0132230.htm
http://sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa004&article
Doesn't say anything about a solution to the real issues, which are economically and safely recovering the hydrogen in a motor vehicle and the slow rate of absorption.
More promising is using organic nanopores (from corncobs, natch) to store methane:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/0702
Unsurprisingly it's not the formation of solid dihydrogen as you might expect from the amazingly poorly written press release. Like almost everyone else they're working on chemical hydrogen storage, whereby hydrogen-rich compounds are used to store and release hydrogen gas. The remainder are working on physical dihydrogen storage (carbon nanotubes etc).
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Oh well, it's something else completely, I guess.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Methane
Balloons?
You are attempting to read sigs. Cancel or Allow?
The powder is available in grape, blue raspberry and kiwi-strawberry.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
My hydrogen storage device: a giant balloon around an aliminium frame inflated with the gas, such that it is lighter than air. Attach a few engines and this green machine could be manouevred through the skies, carrying massive cargo and passengers. I just need some help to think of an imposing name for the future of transportation.
This said, most of universe's energy comes from the fusion of Hydrogen nuclei.
Like the hydrogen atoms found attached to long-chain carbon molecules.
Eureka!! They've rediscovered Paraffin!!
Home power has a cool PDF that describes how to create your own metal hydride based system. What's cool about their plans is they use bulk materials direct from the manufacturers and then show you how to prime your own system in a home lab if you're so inclined. I'd love to try it.
Seems I read there was a similar system that is used in one version of the hydrogen powered car prototypes and they say they can get a hundred miles per tank on tanks about the size of a scuba tank.
>'The next step is to produce a safe, compact storage system for the compound that is both lightweight and affordable.'
You want safe, compact, lightweight, and affordable. You can have any three.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Wasn't there a US university doing this type of research 3 years ago. They had to stop since they couldn't buy the
catalyst do to US explosives regulation. They did have two prototype cars, a corvette and a truck, from what I remember.
From what I understand it's an extremely safe technology. If you have a link to the website, please post it!
A pound of Hydrogen weaighs..like 3Oz! ;)
Winky added for the humor impaired.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And it is indeed easily maufactured, non-polluting, non-toxic, cheap, safe to transport, and (usually) leaves no residue behind.
It is also very cheap to manufacture, and can be delivered to your home at a price cheaper than dirt or gravel in volume. And it is also found in quantity at most fuel stations where you buy gasoline, so the need to establish a seperate distribution system is not going to be too much of a problem. Indeed, the major oil companies already offer it for sale at premium prices from independent refineries and distilleries.
The chemical? Dihydrogen monoxide, also known as hydroxylic acid.
Of course, in its solid form I usually use it in a few drinks, but who is counting here. It does need a bit of help to release the hydrogen from the compound, but perpetual energy machines are not a problem for many individuals who are looking for other forms of solid hydrogen.
So with cars running fuel cells that are essentially free of vehicle pollution, now they're going to muck it up by throwing chemicals and other non-energy-related things with it? I guess the future of transportation is fine as long as we will continue to have a pollution crisis in one form or another.
More Twoson than Cupertino
A bacteria that can eat brunswick stew and release hydrogen!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Of course, you are right in questioning how standard these things will get. (Answer: If it will kill a competitor or three, not very)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Nothing that new here.
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a r_News/TCC_Drives_A_Hydrogen_Prius.S196.A11951.htm l
Energy Conversion Devices has two stock Prius vehicles modified to run on Hydrogen instead of gasoline tooling around Detroit and LA. The hydorgen is stored as a Nickel Hydride (solid). Right now they can travel about 200 miles on a "tank" of hydrogen.
More info on the web site. http://www.ovonic-hydrogen.com/home/home.htm
It's also been on CNBC.
http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid
And the Car Connection. http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto_News/Green_C
I started laughing when the article stated that burning hydrogen produced zero pollution. Sure, if you live in a pure oxygen environment. Unfortunately, cars have to operate with a supply that's mostly nitrogen and significant portion of the resulting pollution is nitrogen compounds. Besides, the energy density per weight still sucks worse than decent battery technology which really does have zero emissions at the point of use.
From TFA
We've reached a milestone with our ability to condense hydrogen into a usable solid,' said Dr. McGrady.
I'm not sure I trust a "doctor" who claims that he can condense a gas into a solid. Correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm not a Physics professor, but doesn't condense refer exclusively to changing states from gas to liquid?
Sure its fun until oxygen or moisture gets into the fuel tank! The powder's properties would suffer if it were exposed to oxygen or water. In the event of a tank rupture could the aluminum passivate the powder?
One problem with that.. It requires a high amount of energy to dissociate back into its elemental components, with poor energy return. It's heavy, bulky, corrodes certain metals, and is easily contaminated by trace elements. If it freezes, it expands to twice its volume and breaks whatever container it's in. If it's temperature exceeds it's boiling point, you get steam. With predictable results to it's vessel.
Pelletized hydrogen sounds like a novel idea that it might just work if they can get the energy/weight density to where it can be economical.
I can see the masses headed to the corner store to buy a bag of hydrogen briquets to run the family car or power the home fuel cell.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Supernovas already put the energy in to every atom heavier than iron (IIRC). We blow a few neutrons at it and we can get that supernova solar (FLoaBW) power back out.
Then we blow a few neutrons at the nuclear "waste" to make it into fuel or (more) stable isotopes.
It takes so little nuclear fuel to replace so much coal:
"one kilogram of uranium can theoretically produce
One kilogram of uranium vs. one million five hundred thousand kilograms of coal.
1500000 : 1 pounds, tons, talents, however you measure your fuel. Every unit of uranium fuel replaces ~4500000 units of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Anyone who is pro-nuke is more of an environmentalist than anyone who is anti-nuke.
It's called water and it comes in a liquid, solid, or gas form
I just realized that there's this really new way to store hydrogen. It contains as much as 15% hydrogen, much more than the article's 9%, and is perfectly suitable for today's automobile motors. It is a clear liquid, boiling at 99 C, and can be easily pumped. It burns cleanly, and is safe to transport. It is available from biological sources. Hydrogen doesn't evaporate off it.
The magic compound is called iso-octane, which contains 85% carbon and 15% hydrogen. If we could only solve the small technological problem of getting the carbon from non-fossil sources, then we're all set!
Hydrogen economy is much like the age-old idea of powering a power plant by the obvious, plugging it into a wall socket. (This reality bite brought to you by your resident industrial chemist.)
Generation and storage of hydrides as a solution for safe hydrogen transport is an old idea, I recall hearing about it on the radio in automotive applications as far back as 1988. This is nothing new, I'm surprised its being seen as such.
This will still have no effect on the petroleum based industry and infrastructure, it has been proven time and time again that alternative fuels simply will not happen until petroleum resources are exhausted, which will be quite some time.
It is much the same as fiber not replacing copper to the home. I recall hearing about how fiber would be in all our homes about the same time as I heard of hydride storage schemes back in the late eighties.
There has been too much investment in existing infrastructure to abandon it until it is no longer useful. Its that simple.
The parent is right.
:).
While journalism pretends to be balanced and accurate, aka "the truth"; press releases are under no such pretense.
Press Releases for major (i.e. publicly traded) companies follow a standard where "truth" and "legally defensible" are interchangeable.
Small companies like this (fishing for grant money) are more likely to follow: cash = EV (statement).
Where EV is something on the order of:
likely to get sued = (1 - (statement accuracy %)) * fudge factor 1
likely to get grant = (statement accuracy %) * fudge factor 2
net expected value = ((likely to get grant) * (value of grant)) - ((likely to get sued) * (cost of litigation))
Now, craft statement such that "net expected value" is maximized, while keeping within tolerances for "likely to get sued". Some companies have a low tolerance, therefore the statement will be completely (or at least nearly) interchangable with "legally defensible". Other companies have a much higher tolerance; often because the decision makers already have a scapegoat in mind
Forget being just delicious! Just imagine being able to light your burps!
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
{Boom!}
Have gnu, will travel.
Ovonic of Rochester Michigan has had this solid hydrogen storage technology for atleast the last 4 years. Check out their website: http://www.ovonic.com/eb_hy_hydrogen_sol.cfm
Of course the introduction of ethylene glycol into dihydrogen monoxide can help reduce the freezing and boiling issues if ingested toxicity is not a significant problem, such as for automotive applications, but it does introduce other problems.
Chemical corrosion is something that is significant, although that can be mitigated. The largest problem of atomic disassociation, however that is achieved, is that you end up with monoatomic oxygen, perhaps the most reactive oxidizer you can find. The corrosive effects of that by product can indeed damage most metalic structures and can cause potentially explosive environments.
Still, getting back to the original posting, solid hydrogen does offer some interesting benefits, particularly if you could find a chemical compound that would produce an exothermic reaction (dihydrogen monoxide tends to be endothermic in most reactions) that would release the hydrogen. But as mentioned in this general thread any such compound makes a nice rocket propellant (or explosive) if made in large quantities. Many of the NASA rockets already use Hydrogen/LOX fuel systems because hydrogen already has a high ISP. Adding in some extra energy from the hydrogen release would make the fuel and rocket system using such a chemical very attractive and may raise the ISP of the rocket motor.
Given those problems and assuming that the remaining carbon were used as fuel somewhere else (say in a power plant), even given the higher efficiencies associated with the hydrogen as the primary fuel for a vehicle or other prime mover [based on the Carnot numbers etc.] in isolation, there's still no guarantee that overall the process is any greener than just burning the full hydrocarbon fuel more fully (under stochiometric conditions) -- which is why the big low speed diesels are on the order of twice as fuel efficient as current IC gasoline engines using radically less processed fuels.
In my book, an efficient biodiesel based engine is still the best source for the next century's engines.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
But its not clear that mankind is mucking that up yet. Maybe airplane contrails.
you forgot the most important point:
* If grits were made of Hydrogen and Natalie Portman were pouring them down my pants, exactly how many bowls of these grits would it take to run one moderately configured Linux server?
You can't handle the truth.
Using hydrogen to power a car is insanely stupid.
There is no scenario for the use of hydrogen in a terrestrial vehicle that would not be rendered safer, cheaper, and less polluting by taking whatever source of energy used to manufacture hydrogen and directly applying it to move the car -- skipping the extremely wasteful hydrogen conversion/transport/storage processes. Electrons are much easier to produce, ship, store, and use than hydrogen. There are already LiON battery technologies that promise very rapid charge/discharge cycles with no thermal runaway, and over 9000 complete charge/discharge cycles. NiMH and Ni-Zn, while not quite as good in some ways as LiON, are still more viable than using hydrogen, whether by burning in an ICE, or in a fool-cell. And last time I checked, we are much closer to being able to build 50,000,000 EVs than we are to being able to build 50,000 fool-cell vehicles, because lithium (and nickel, and zinc) is far cheaper and more plentiful than platinum, which so far, is the only reasonably (?) effective catalyst for a fool-cell.
Hydrogen will only be the fuel of choice for two groups: Those who have more money than sense, and those who can freely spend other people's money. Those of us that have to spend our own money, and don't have enough to burn, will go for more efficient technologies, such as EV and bio-diesel. Unless we are coerced by the government.
Political Correctness makes lousy science, lousy economics, and even worse public policy.
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"Dr. McGrady has assembled a world class research team of eight -- one of the largest research and development teams focused on hydrogen in Canada and one of very few in the country dedicated to novel hydrogen storage materials."
Seems that if a country were truly interested in a Hydrogen Economy, they could find more than 8 people to work on it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Since Borax contains no hydrogen less tightly bound than in water, it couldn't possibly be a good hydrogen delivery medium. The article you kindly linked to clearly states the chemical involved is sodium borohydride
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
what about all those folks that convert turkey farm offal into fuel?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
...a substance for enhancing the performance of both the vehicle and the operator--at the same time!
Ok, lets just assume that this is a real breakthrough, and that we can safely and cheaply:
.15 kg/L hydrogen * 120 MJ/kg or 5 kwh / liter versus 9.7 kwh /liter for gasoline) and with the extra efficiency boost it IS energy competitive.
l ine_consumption_country.php
p ?form=1) and aluminum production is very energy intensive (I calculate it as being 6 times *higher* - at 30 kilowatt hours /liter - than the hydrogen is meant to store. That becomes 90 kilowatt hours / liter considering that most of the energy used in aluminum production is electric)
* manufacture said compound (AlH3)
* store said compound
* use said compound with high efficiency in fuel vehicles
After all, its volumetric density is fair (I calculate it at
My question is - where are we going to get the aluminum? This would require a MASSIVE production spike in aluminum - to provide a replacement for the ~ 400 million metric tons of gasoline that the US alone uses.
(source: http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/statistics/gaso
)
Right now, the amount of aluminum we produce globally per year is about 20 times lower - 23.8 million metric tons yearly to be exact (source: http://www.world-aluminum.org/stats/formServer.as
So the only realistic way of doing this would be to recycle the aluminum and 'rehydrate it'. And there would be a hefty price premium on the creation of the fuel ($12 / gallon at current aluminum prices, which would probably go up dramatically if this took off)
Overall then this is a mixed bag. The infrastructure costs would be substantial in creating the distribution network for the fuel, both for hydrating and recycling the fuel containers, and the energy cost would be horrific in making the aluminum.
At 30 kilowatt hours / liter, and 700 grams CO2/ kilowatt hour (if the energy making the aluminum was coal), this corresponds to 19000 grams C02 / liter of fuel, versus the 2000 grams CO2 / kilowatt hour that you get by simply burning the gasoline to go! The aluminum had better be VERY recyclable.
I'm skeptical. It'd be cool if it works, but we'll see.
Ed
hydrogen gas into a usable solid under mild conditions - wouldn't be to mix it with oxygen to make H2O then to put it under 0C (mild conditions) rendering it into a usable solid also known as 'ice'?
Safe Hydrogen has a similar scheme, they store the hydrogen in an *inert* chemical soup, and its quite easy to extract. See www.safehydrogen.com
Sorry, but replacing gasoline with hydrogen isn't going to be that easy, if indeed it ever is plausible. Gasoline is a fuel at STP, hydrogen isn't. The only hydrogen in our environment is bound to other chemicals, which means we have to put energy into the system to liberate it and store it. Right now, that is an energy sink, not a source. Ken
One way to make vast amounts of hydrogen very quickly leaving carbon out of the equation would be to "burn" aluminum in the presence of steam, that is, to pass superheated steam over white hot aluminum powder, the steam disassociates into hydrogen and oxygen, and the oxygen reacts with the hot aluminum producing aluminum oxide and liberating hydrogen, some of which could be diverted as fuel to heat the aluminum powder and keep the process going, and the rest could be stored via the hydrogen storage method du jour for use as a fuel.
Or hydrogen could be produced as needed on a scaled-down version of the above process, eliminating the need for storage altogether. Imagine a car that is fueled by dumping in sack of aluminum powder into a hopper, filling up a water tank for the steam, and emptying another hopper containing spent aluminum oxide into a collection bin at the fueling depot.
Then you would take the aluminum oxide and recycle it, that is, re-smelt it back into aluminum in an electric arc reduction furnace, re-liberating the oxygen. This makes aluminum an energy storage medium, just like hydrogen.
Or you could leave the hydrogen out of the equation altogether, and use aluminum-air batteries, and recycling the spent aluminum oxide as above.
The problem is, smelting aluminum use vast amounts of electricity, which, if generated using fossil fuels, pours vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as was stated in the previous post.
Which brings us back to the old adage that there are no non-nuclear methods for generating large amounts of hydrogen cleanly and efficiently. So you would basically need nuclear power supplied smelters to produce hydrogen and/or aluminum in the quantities needed to replace fossil fuels, but that would then realise the ultimate goal (somewhat indirectly) of having nuclear powered cars.
A little research (i.e. Google, the two lecturer's names, and two of the likely compounds they're working on) revealed an abstract from the paper which, I suspect, is at the root of the press release being reported on.
[SIGH] So many Slashdotters berate journalists (often with justification), then decline to go and do the basic ground work which science-educated Slashdotters should be capable of, while English/ Arts-educated journalists and PR flacks can't or don't do. [SIGH]
The researchers were : Craig Jensen (University of Hawaii), Sean McGrady, Reyna Ayabe (University of Hawaii), Ben Reddy (University of New Brunswick)
The locale was : 2007 APS March Meeting , March 5-9, 2007; Denver, Colorado, Session L39: "Focus Session: Hydrogen Storage II"
So, it's not a formally-published paper as yet, but it is research that is being "reviewed by their peers". Face-to-face. Which isn't exactly easy.
The abstract of the paper presented is at http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR07/Event/59811 :
"Alane, AlH$_{3}$ has many of the properties that are requisite for materials to be considered viable for onboard hydrogen storage applications. Most notibly, it contains 10.1 wt{\%} hydrogen and undergoes dehydrogenation at appreciable rates at temperatures below 100$^{\circ}$C. However, the very low, $\ge $ 6 kJ/mol, enthalpy of dehydrogenation of AlH$_{3}$ prohibits subsequent re-hydrogenation through standard gas-solid techniques except at very high pressures or very low temperatures. The extremely low solubility of gaseous H$_{2}$ in conventional organic solvents also vitiates a solution-based approach. Re-hydrogenation of Al using a supercritical fluid potentially offers a workable approach since the fluid can act as a solvent, at the same time remaining completely miscible with permanent gases like hydrogen. Recently, it has been found that mixtures of NaH and Al can be hydrogenated to sodium alanate, NaAlH$_{4}$ under modest pressures and temperatures in supercritical fluids. We have now extended these studies to the hydrogenation of Al to AlH$_{3}$. The results of these studies and experimental details will be reported."
Shortened version : getting the hydrogen back into aluminium-based materials is hard work, but it can be made easier by dissolving the hydrogen (and possibly the aluminous base) in a "supercritical fluid".
They carefully don't specify the chemistry of the supercritical fluid, probably for patenting reasons. My guesses : CO2? DHMO? both might have issues with strongly reducing aluminous compounds. How about short-chain hydrocarbons or short-organic amides? A bit rough for the general public to handle, but we're talking about the re-charging of the storage material here, not pouring the stuff into your fuel tank, so I wouldn't see that as a show-stopper per se). The general public would probably not be present at this side of the fuel-system cycle.
Interesting work. I can almost hear Grignard stop turning in his grave and pricking his dead ears up.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Ssssniffffffff. . . . oops! Fucking Cock-a-roaches!! You need people like me, so you can poin' an' say "Thass the bad guy."
Liquid and solid phases are the condensed phases. Just as you can vaporize something straight from a solid, you can also condense something straight to a solid skipping the liquid phase.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensed_phase
"Vernacular" means common, everyday usage. It's fairly common for words to have a slightly different technical meanings than they do in the vernacular. What you were doing was interpretting a technical usage as a vernacular usage. The fact that the guy has a doctorate should have tipped you off that he wasn't using the vernacular and that there was a technical usage you weren't familiar with.
An extreme case of this is the word "berry" where the vernacular and botanical usages don't match up at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry
I'll bet the chemicals being used to solidify the hydrogen are either toxic, or come from a toxic process, just like any energy storage method. They will have finite useful lives, too, no doubt - resulting in a requirement for disposal. Even recycling the hydride substrate material would probably result in toxic wastes.
The issue facing this planet is not sources of energy, it's energy overconsumption. We either need to stablise the population at the current level and use less than 10% of the energy we now use, or cut the population to one tenth of the current figure to continue as we are. Hydrogen won't make a skerrick of difference to that equation.
Pah, pollution free? The only way to live a pollution free life is to live like a chimpanzee.
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