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Diamonds Are a Fuel Cell's Best Friend
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at UC Davis have used nanocrystals made of diamond-like cubic zirconia to develop cooler fuel cells. Even if hydrogen fuel cells have been touted as clean energy sources, current fuel cells have to run at high temperatures of up to 1,000 C. This new technology will allow fuel cells to run at much lower temperatures, between 50 and 100 C. Obviously, this could lead to a widespread use of fuel cells, which could become a realistic alternative power source for vehicles. The researchers have applied for a patent for their technology, but don't tell when fuel cells based on their work are about to appear."
Now my girlfriend will be begging for a new car in stead of a ring, thnx alot..
Look to DeBeers to rush in and kill this technology. God forbid we have a car that has a CZ solution when only a real diamond can cool forever.
since when has cheap cut glass been "diamond like" ?
Now when people break into my car they wont be after my stereo, but my fuel tank. :)
Are they strictly for Hydrogen Fuel cells, which has a LOT of other challenges before being ready for widespread vehicle deployment, or Hydrocarbon Fuel Cells like Ethanol, which is almost ready to go? Nope, haven't RTFA's
Time to buy stocks in man made diamonds.
...when she finds out you duped her with a cubic zirconia. You better hope theres no free hydrogen around when she finds out.
I guess the most significant problem with fuel cells was that they just weren't cool enough... this should improve their "oooh" factor. ;-)
...Hydrogen Fuel cells, which has a LOT of other challenges before being ready for widespread vehicle deployment...
One of them being that Hydrogen gas is corrosive to many metals and rubber compounds.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
As apparently no one bothered to read even the summary, let me be the first to say there is NO DIAMOND in this solution, real or artificial...It's cubic zirconium, which is a sparkly gem that is often used to simulate diamond, but has neither diamond's chemical makeup, nor its hardness.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It's not surprising that the slashdot crowd would confuse diamonds and CZ, but science aside, let me assure you, any woman will tell you there is a major difference between the two.
And I can tell you guys here, if you're (un?)lucky you'll find out there's several thousand noticeable "differences" between a 1 carat CZ and a 1 carat diamond...
stuff |
Time to order a new Dodge Hindenburg.
No longer will any large diamond conglomerate do generic advertising that will benefit the new competitors on the block. With DeBeers strangle hold of the world's diamond market barely at 60% from their good old days of 85%, their long held monopoly is over.Other players like Argyle Diamond Mines from Australia, Ekati from Canada and the Russian United Syndicate are staking their claim to a piece of the polished diamond pie. Source
DeBeers may have a hard time with it. Also, (can't find the source) DeBeers is trying to become more of a brand name than control the market to keep their margins up. With other countries in the market now, DeBeers realizes that they can't control the market any more, so they're going to concentrate on marketing.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Nowhere in TFA were diamonds mentioned. As numerous posts have already pointed out, cubic zirconia is not diamond-like, it's a cheap diamond substitute. The properties of diamonds have nothing to do with the technology in this article. So why was that added to the summary of an article that doesn't mention it?!?
...Another being that there's no good source of solo hydrogen available on the earth, so we have to extract it from some other means. And of course, that requires yet even more energy. ...And of course, the lovely thought of driving around in my car with a nice tank of hydrogen fueling me, knowing that I'm just a wreck away from a hindenburg style disaster.
While we want fuel cells for transportation purposes to run at low temperatures, it is not obvious that this is appropriate for fixed-point fuel cells. Low temperature fuel cells can handle hydrogen, but I am unaware of them being able to handle hydrocarbon fuels at reasonable loadings. Typically you need temperatures of a few hundred degrees C to enable the molecular reforming for handling of hydrocarbons. This is reasonable for fixed point systems which can be kept at temperature. The higher temperature also allows the use of lower cost catalysts.
Is there energy that would other wise be lost as heat provide a higher output? I would assume so. I know if I invented a process that made a fuel cell run cooler and with higher output I'd be sure to mention that. I know very little about how fuel cells work, so any insight would be appreciated
Folks, it does not get any iffier than this. Dont hold your breath waiting for copper fuel cells operating at 50C.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
1. Diamond? WTF is diamond doing in the title? Cubic zirconia's nothing like diamond unless you believe the ads of people trying to sell you rings with CZ's in them. (And if you've played with gemstones, you might be able to spot those with your bare eyes: they have a 10% different index of refraction of light.
2. Zirconia has been used for a fuel cell 'catalyst' for a while. Here's a reference to a two-year-old paper about a related fuel cell system.
3. I say 'catalyst' in the above, because zirconia's only sort of a catalyst. While the zirconia remains more or less zirconia, it's not just offering a surface for reaction chemistry: it's actually exchanging oxygen with the reactants during the reaction.
4. Still, it's interesting and weird that the electrical potential is being transferred by protons, rather than electrons (as per TFA.) I'm not familiar with that, just with holes and electrons, so that bears more reading.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
"This 2015 Prius had a 60ct cell... but we've taken the rock outta Xibit's ear and given you a full 250ct cell!"
To my knowledge, there are already LTFC (Low-temperature fuel cells), like PEM, which are already working for years in 50-100 deg C range, but the problem is keeping them below the 100 degrees.
Two years ago, Georgia Tech has announced, that they were capable of pushing it up to 120 deg (source)
and last year, Volkswagen announced the development of a fuel cell working at 160 deg (source).
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
"So if we put aside the spectacularly improbable prospect of fueling our planet with extraterrestrial hydrogen imports, the only way to get free hydrogen on Earth is to make it. The trouble is that making hydrogen requires more energy than the hydrogen so produced can provide. Hydrogen, therefore, is not a source of energy. It simply is a carrier of energy. And it is, as we shall see, an extremely poor one.
The spokesmen for the hydrogen hoax claim that hydrogen will be manufactured from water via electrolysis. It is certainly possible to make hydrogen this way, but it is very expensive--so much so, that only four percent of all hydrogen currently produced in the United States is produced in this manner. The rest is made by breaking down hydrocarbons, through processes like pyrolysis of natural gas or steam reforming of coal.
Neither type of hydrogen is even remotely economical as fuel. The wholesale cost of commercial grade liquid hydrogen (made the cheap way, from hydrocarbons) shipped to large customers in the United States is about $6 per kilogram. High purity hydrogen made from electrolysis for scientific applications costs considerably more. Dispensed in compressed gas cylinders to retail customers, the current price of commercial grade hydrogen is about $100 per kilogram. For comparison, a kilogram of hydrogen contains about the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline. This means that even if hydrogen cars were available and hydrogen stations existed to fuel them, no one with the power to choose otherwise would ever buy such vehicles. This fact alone makes the hydrogen economy a non-starter in a free society."
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Hiyall folks, I'm Electra and for the next hour we have a special on Dimondellia fuel cells. Plug them into your SUV and you can zoom off to the mall! Call the number on the screen... what's that Jeff, ? Sure put her on.... Ionia, can you hear us."? Oh hes, hello Electra, maybe you remember I bought a dozen of these last sunday night during your T.J Hooker countdown of Power? And I'm sooo happyyy with them!!! The protons released like you said and they really glitter as they go into tri-covalent catalysys! Now my husband and I drive everywhere and sometimes he lets me .. oh wait, I gotta go, looks like I need to pour more Dimondellia into the ion-exchange beds....
Slashdot is a meta-news meta-blog site so article summaries are like a game of telephone. A scientist publishes a paper, it is boiled-down for a journalist, the journalist distills that into an article, a blogger summarizes the article, and the article is summarized to Slashdot. Net result: "I found a way to fabricate ziconium oxide at 15nm" becomes "Fuel cells can now become widespread, thanks to diamonds!"
The other important thing, if this works, is that less cooling equipment will be required for the fuel cell. Current fuel cells are workeable only with large vehicles such as buses, since they use such high temps that the required cooling equipment takes up a lot of space. With a car there would no luggage area since that would be taken up by cooling equipment. I hope this new technology works out - could enable making fuel cells small enough for automobiles!
They're dilithium crystals, ye insensitive clod!
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
1. No one is saying hydrogen is a fuel. The idea is that you manufacture hydrogen using non-CO2 emmiting technology (nuclear, solar, wind, "clean coal" if that isn't just pure hype), and the hydrogen is essentially a "battery" (for lack of a better term) that isn't totally destructive to the enviornment like current batteries.
2. Unless you plan you coat your fuel tank with powdered aluminum and iron oxide, and then connect that to some sort of static electricity igniter, you aren't going to have a hindenburg style disaster. I mean, geez, you know that cars are full of highly flamable liquids, right now, right? It is kind of like last century when some people chose to stick with gas lighting in their homes because they thought electricity might be a fire hazard.
First, it's a Roland the Plogger story, so it's probably wrong.
Second, it's another one of those "we made some minor advance in materials science on a laboratory scale and this will change the world Real Soon Now" stories. It's too early to be making claims like that. All they have is a new material that might be good for something. Maybe.
Third, it's one of those surface chemistry/crystal chemistry as "nanotechnology" stories. "Nanotechnology" has turned into a buzzword for getting funding for surface chemistry work.
1) Patent alternative energy for cars 2) ??? No wait, sell patent to big oil 3) Profit
God spoke to me.
Cubic Zirconia! You know you are getting a pimped out ride when even your fuel cell has bling!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
As far as "non-CO2 emitting" goes, "clean coal" is hype -- it has carbon in it to begin with; where do you think it's gonna go? IIRC, what "clean coal" actually means is just burning coal with reduced soot (particulates), sulfur, and NOx output.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
... and this is contradictory how exactly? Just because it's hot does not mean it is inefficient. Indeed, high-temperature FCs have the highest efficiencies, ranging up to 70% with combined cycles.
They already do. Have been for decades. See PEM fuel cells. The point is that there are bunches of possible FC designs around, TFA probably meant the SOFCs, the only ones to reach 1000 degrees.
As a fuel-cell researcher (yes I have a damn PhD in the field) I am very skeptical of anything surfacing on news releases and containing the "patent" word—It just makes my bullshit detector go crazy.
This technology is still very experimental, there is no working prototype, and if I had a penny for every new fuel-cell design that appeared any year I would have Bill Gates cleaning my toilet with his tongue. Besides, the article is quite badly written: it confuses high-temperature SOFC, assumed when the high temperature range is given, with low-temperature FCs that need platinum, which SOFCs do not need at all. It's like confusing an internal-combustion engine with a steam engine.
I am not saying it is complete vaporware, but it certainly seems overblown. People find new ways to design FCs and their components all the time.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Actually, I have heard the term used to describe plants which use carbon capture technology on the CO2 to store it in the ground ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_st orage ), as well as just the "scrubbed" emissions. I am highly skeptical of either one.
At least we know that we can get CZ in powder form.
Does this mean that until now, proposed fuel-cell solutions for portable computers involved temperatures of 1000 deg. C.? Or is this just hydrogen, and not methanol? Kind of makes the Sony burning batteries seem cool by comparison.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Aside from all the obligatory funnies about CZ vs. Diamonds (and all of the female [and not the good kind of] heat energy created but not harnessable when a male substitutes the former for the later...), this seems at best 'kinda sorta interesting'.
The Carnot law of thermodynamics has a specific ratio that even a fuel cell can't beat, and a temp range of 100C just isn't efficient no matter what fuel is used. (1-273K/373k = about 27% max). So the question is what level of intermediate heat ranges can be developed with any fuel to heat technology, and the air pressure required for an efficient burn has to be factored in, that is, does the fuel cell operate at atmospheric pressures, and if not how much pressure energy is required?
But if this same technology can work at moderate temperatures and horsepower levels at say 370C with moderate pressurization requirements, then this becomes workable at about double the fuel efficiency of current IC engines. Make it work with a hybrid engine plus have a non-petroleum or NG based infrastructure and safe storage medium for the hydrogen, and this might just be
worth it.
In other words. Don't expect this to amount to much in the near future. Middle future, maybe.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
>Obviously, this could lead to a widespread use of fuel cells, which could become a realistic alternative power source for vehicles.
I hope I wont have to see the day when powering your vehicle with diamonds is considered an alternative to gas!!!
Does not aluminum and Iron melt at that temperature? Also hydrogen is extremely explosive. How safe are fuel cells?
http://saveie6.com/
Parent is dead on. Hydrogen isn't a fuel source - it's a great way to store energy, but there simply isn't enough on earth to consider it a source of fuel.
My blog
He should have been using cubic zirconias instead of diamonds in that Batman movie.
..And of course, the lovely thought of driving around in my car with a nice tank of hydrogen fueling me, knowing that I'm just a wreck away from a hindenburg style disaster. "Most deaths were not caused directly by the fire but were from jumping from the burning ship. Those passengers who rode the ship on its descent to the ground survived. Some deaths of crew members occurred because they wanted to save people on board the ship."reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_129_Hindenburg
"The Nature of Hydrogen:
* Hydrogen is less flammable than gasoline.
* Hydrogen disperses quickly.
* Hydrogen is non-toxic.
* Hydrogen combustion produces only water.
* Hydrogen can be stored safely. Tanks currently in use
reference http://www.hydrogennow.org/Facts/Safety-1.htm
Both websites refer to the causes of the Hindenburg disaster, pinning the blame on the blimp material for the largest part of the fault.
The Hindenburg really wasn't a hydrogen disaster, it was an airship disaster that happened to also involve hydrogen.
This is confusing and inaccurate. Cubic Zirconia is not Carbon, so therefore it is not a diamond. Proton exchange membrane fuel cells never run at 800-1000C, the proton exchange membrane would be vaporized. Solid Oxide fuel cells run at those higher temperatures. There are many types of fuel cells. Not all fuel cells use hydrogen. Whoever wrote that story was very confused.
I hadn't thought of that.
You're right though, I feel much safer driving a vehicle with a tank of gasoline strapped under it than that H2 stuff.
I've never heard of any problems with good ol' gasoline, no-siree.
Maow
Gasoline is not flammable. The vapor is. This means that a gasoline fire is limited by the ability to create gasoline fumes. Hydrogen on the other hand, is a gas at room temperature, so if a hydrogen tanks blows, you get a big cloud of Hydrogen gas, and maybe a small puddle of liquid Hydrogen at 252.87 degrees. When the hydrogen tank blew though, it mixed with air rapidly, and created an explosive mixture of air and hydrogen. Gasoline on the other hand, has a smaller explosive area, due to the fuel being liquid but would be able to sustain a burn, instead of a "pop".
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DeBeers will rush to tout this tech. One, this will soak up the market for cubic zirconoia. Two, they will advertise it so much that the women who are attracted to bling will have an even worse attitude towards cubic zirconia. "What?!? Why don't you buy me a muffler while you're at it?"
Infuriate left and right
In all this talk of hydrogen and fuel cells, I still have not heard anyone come up with an idea for producing hydrogen in a many that doesn't use more energy than a FC using that hydrogen can produce. Until that issue is solved (and it may be an impossibility) I see no reason to continue with this HFC fantasy.
When fuel tanks rupture, gasoline liquid drops down, pools, runs around and creates vapor at a rate depending on the temp outside. Hydrogen gas, OTOH is very light, already a gas, and just shoots out and quickly rises up and out of the accident area. The danger from gasoline at a real world accident is much higher than hydrogen.
ZIRCONIA ZTOLEN! http://www.snpp.com/episodes/1F09.html
Gasoline also can cling to the skin, soak into clothing, and splash over a large area. Choose your poision.
But it isn't like hydrogen cars wouldn't be crash tested and built for safety, just like any other car. When people talk about the whole explosion issue, I tend to think they have some other agenda against hydrogen.
Hydrogren, with its monoproton nucleus, reminds me of the aristocratic monarchy and reeks of feudalism. Politically, I am unable to support anything that does not conform to my ideals of economic freedom and democracy. Down with Hydrogen! Up with Ununoctium!
I am saying hydrogen is a fuel. You oxidize this fuel for heat and work. This is the same as petroleum, methane, vegetable oil, and whale blubber, all of which can be formed from non-CO2 emitting technology and be oxidized in a fuel cell or set on fire / exploded. What is the difference again?
As someone who works in the fuel cell industry (an who works with hydrogen on a daily basis), I can unequivocally say I'd rather use hydrogen than gasoline as a fuel.
Your scenario of the fuel tank "blowing" presumably refers to a mechanical rupture. Either fuel would quickly escape from the tank and potentially form an explosive mixture with air. Because gasoline vapor is more dense than air, the explosive air/gasoline mixture tends to hug the ground and stay near the source of the vapor (i.e. the liquid gasoline remaining in the tank or on the ground). A spark would ignite the explosive mixture and create heat which would quickly vaporize (and ignite) the rest of the gasoline.
Hydrogen is the least dense of all elements, so a potentially explosive mixture rises away from the source (ruptured tank). Also, hydrogen disperses exceptionally rapidly in air (almost 600% more quickly than gasoline vapor), which allows an explosive mixture to quickly disperse and dilute below the lower explosive limit of 4% in air.
Finally, the energy density of hydrogen is much less than that of gasoline. That's a great advantage from a safety standpoint. Fuel cells are extremely efficient (much more so than combustion engines); that's how they are able to overcome this energy-density "deficiency" with respect to hydrocarbon fuels.
So, what about people who drive cars running on compressed natural gas? (you know, the ones that have the sticker with a diamond with 'CNG' in it) People eventually get over their distrust for these things and use them. There's plenty of them, just look around you. Aren't you afraid of having an accident with one of those?
Have EVDO, will travel.
...if you have one of these instead of some pie-in-the-sky fantasy hydrogen fuel cell car that will probably never happen.
http://www.teslamotors.com/
Let's face it, a 100% electric car is a far better idea than H2FC in every way, and they are available right now. The main issue is price and early adoption. Once more people start buying them, the cost will come down.
Hydrogen fuel cells seem like a great solution to polluting cars, and longer 'batter' life on gadgets. But what it really is, is just a way on carrying power (electricity) in the form of hydrogen from one place to another. You take the power from your home, to your car, and then use it as you drive around. But creating that hydrogen takes a lot of power.
With most of the worlds power coming for very unclean sources, mainly coal fire power stations, while hydrogen fuel cells don't have any emissions at the car, the power used to break the water into hydrogen and oxygen can create a huge amount of pollution.
Of course the exception to this comes from places where the massive amounts of electricity required to break water into hydrogen and oxygen can come from clean sources. Scandinavia, I'm looking at you.
The flying car joke is even better as Davis has such a company: Moller International.
IIRC the clean coal initiative in some circles relates to the gassified coal process which for a centralized power plant means that it is quite possible to sequester the carbon emmissions, as well as others like sulfur. They even built a prototype in fla (they being a fla power company) as proof of concept. It irks me that every time I read about gassified coal lately it is in relation to a diesel fuel to be used in cars . . . a complete mis-use of the technology. Why is it that almost every energy technology being developed is immediately applied to the auto even when most if not all of them are most appropriate for large scale power generation? For the time being I feel like we're better off keeping the car on gas and replacing our old coal power plant with newer coal and other "green" and renewable technologies. Once that is switched than the electric car becomes a no-brainer.
When people talk about the whole explosion issue, I tend to think they have some other agenda against hydrogen.
Yeah, like stupidity.
It's just like (as another poster here said) in the last century when people preferred gas lighting to electricity because they thought electricity was a fire hazard.
I'm willing to listen to sensible arguments against H2 as a fuel for reasons of efficiency or practicality, but bashing it because of danger of explosion is just idiocy.
Wow, I wonder if we combined a diamond-based fuel cell with the MIT spacesuit http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/1 6/2024242 would it create a Mister Freeze suit like Arnold wore in that whacked-out Batman movie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_%26_Robin_(fil m).
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Hydrogen isn't a fuel source - it's a great way to store energy, but there simply isn't enough on earth to consider it a source of fuel.
No shit, sherlock.
No one ever said it was a fuel to be mined from the planet like oil; it's a transport mechanism which can be easily generated by other methods like burning fossil fuels, geothermal, solar, nuclear, etc. It frees the transportation infrastructure from the initial prime mover energy sources.
That doesn't mean it's not superior to our gasoline-only system we're currently struggling with.
If they wanted a "cooler" fuel cell, they should have used rhinestones baby. Uh-huh.
Repeat after me: hydrogen is not a source of energy. At least not on earth. Did you ever saw a company drilling to get to an underground hydrogen source? You probably could find pure hydrogen somewhere else in the solar system but here it's almost always bonded to oxygen to form water. To separate the hydrogen molecules to its oxygen partner, you need electricity, a lot of it. As you may already know, the electricity in USA is almost entirely produced with the combustion of fossil fuel, so no hydrogen won't solve our energy problem.
simply by adding bling.
A second hand twenty year old first year engineering one (eg. Van Vlack) will do the trick in this case. Yes, zirconica is interesting, fuel cells are cool - and diamond is something that is completely different.
"Diamonds. She'll pretty much have to."
Yeah, that was my thought too. There's loads of low-temperature fuel cells. Here's the chart.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
You don't understand people. Make something cheap, it simply gets used more. If gas dropped in price tomorrow to half it's current value, in a few years you'd be lucky if cars were getting 15mpg. People literally consume until it hurts.
Ok, imagine a new power source appears. Very cheap, very efficient. GM and Ford switch their engines to use it. What happens to the price of gas? It drops until it's as cheap or cheaper than the new source and as i said, car engines will get bigger, more powerful and thirstier to compensate. No conspiracy necessary, just producers giving people what they want.
Also. Hydrogen fuel cells are a red herring. Ask someone where the hydrogen is coming from, and how efficient the production is. Never mind the problems of distribution and storage.
Deleted
Think not, since 100C is still too hot for the family jewels.
Here's one guy who's been doing this for years!!
And they said zombies weren't real!
I thought that the current plan was to bind hydrogen into a solid substrate from which it could be easily released for combustion, but which would prevent accidental leaking. Is that not happening now?
All true /.rs will by now have looked up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_129_Hindenburg#Dea th_toll
Particularly cool is the comparison to the USS Akron. Who'd have thought that He was more dangerous than H2?
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.