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Nanoparticles Could Make Hydrogen Cheaper Than Gasoline
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to EE Times, a California-based company called QuantumSphere has developed nanoparticles that could make hydrogen cheaper than gasoline. The company says its reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings can boost the efficiency of electrolysis (the technique that generates hydrogen from water) to 85% today, exceeding the Department of Energy's goal for 2010 by 10%. The company says its process could be improved to reach an efficiency of 96% in a few years. The most interesting part of the story is that the existing gas stations would not need to be modified to distribute hydrogen. With these nanoparticle coatings, car owners could make their own hydrogen, either in their garage or even when driving."
What do you think the odds are on getting some of this stuff for my hydrogen car kit?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
*cough*bullshit*cough*
What's with all the science articles lately that are basically investor scams?
Sounds like vaporware to me!
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
I already make my own combustible gas while I drive. I just need a motor that will work with it.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
The first commenter, on the linked article's page, has a bridge for sale!
So I can make hydrogen while driving. At an efficiency of perhaps 96%. So, 100 units of energy in resulting in 96 units of energy in the form of hydrogen. Those 96 units then pwoer the car.
Why wouldn't I cut the middle step out and simply use 100% of the energy to make the wheels go round and round?
I am a lawyer, but not yours. Anything I tell you might be a total lie intended to benefit my clients at your expense.
As someone pointed out in the comments on the last hydrogen story, the problem isn't so much making the stuff as it is storing it. Hydrogen cars are a pain because it's incredibly difficult to store hydrogen in such a way that it doesn't leak out. They mention in TFA that this process is so efficient that cars could do the electrolysis on the go with a tank of distilled water, but unless it's efficient enough to be self sustaining that won't work.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
"...car owners could make their own hydrogen, either in their garage or even when driving."
What does "even when driving" mean? On the car while driving? What would be the advantage of that?
I can't decide whether using bottled water as a fuel source would end up making it more expensive, or less. On one hand, someone would try to make even more money off it...but on the other, it's already the most ludicrously priced product out there.
disclaimer: yes, I know bottle water isn't distilled...or even filtered, often.
Why post articles like this? It's just an advertisement for a non-existent technology. There are tons of crap like this out there, why single this one out?
Let us know when someone actually develops something real and working, then it might be news.
That's the sound of Chevron or Exxon putting money on the table to buy this technology.
Excellent--now everyone will have tanks of hydrogen gas in their homes.
Is there some way I can invest in firehouses?
2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom... shouldn't the maximum efficiency be 66%? :)
then the gas companies will hush this up fast. There is no way they want people making fuel.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
Hydrogen is a method for transmission and storage of energy. It is not a source of energy. At least not until they figure out controlled fusion.
before an oil company buys the rights to the patent and buries this technology?
My guess is that a big oil company is already getting a team of lawyers together to stop this research due to some existing patent, or if there is no existing patent, the lawyers will figure out a way to sue the technology out of existence.
Big Oil will never let something like this see the light of day.
Homo homini lupus
so you make hydrogen and oxygen from water den make water from hydrogen and oxygen and all start over?
Here's a two sentence summary for the people who don't read articles:
Instead of using a really good conductor to make the electrodes used for electrolysis, these people propose increasing the electrode's surface area 8,000 times by coating an ordinary steel electrode with butt loads of nanoparticles that are optimized for surface area and conductivity.
That sounds feasible to me.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -Aldous Huxley
The problems I had with hydrogen is that electrolysis isn't efficient enough, you need expensive platinum or palladium catalysts in the fuel cells, and you either need some exotic storage/transport mechanism made of unobtainium, or you have individual users make their own hydrogen (which makes it even less efficient).
Looks like this solves most of those problems. As long as this nanoparticle catalyst is cheaper than platinum (not terribly difficult), the hydrogen economy might actually have a future.
Not a typewriter
Related post: Nano particles could make hydrogen cheaper than [some other very expensive commodity whose price has been driven up artificially]
I want a wind powered car! A flying wind powered car. A flying wind powered car that drives itself.
And a pony.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
so I'm sure the oil industry is very supportive.
Seriously, is it supposed to look like that?
Sounds like this one will kill two birds with one stone. Where do I sign up to get a pee tube installed in my car?
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
"Nano" is dead from overuse. Finding a new catalyst is nice, but using the word "Nano" rarely adds any extra descriptive meaning. Time to relegate "Nano" to buzzword bingo boards.
For example, take this sentence: "I have been nano-splitting nano-particles of H2O into nano molecules of O2 and Helium ever since I've been a cub." and remove nano. There's no difference in meaning.
I can completely picture one guy in his garage puffing his smoke around a system that leaks and causes a chain reaction between homes taking the whole neighborhood out like the hindenburg.
Everybody giggling about this would mean the end of "Big Oil" forgets that gasoline is only one of many petroleum based products. Plastics are still going to be a huge market, for example. The oil companies still won't like it, as their profits will no doubt go down. On the plus side, the profits for terrorist funders (Saudi Arabia) would go down, too.
-- Will program for bandwidth
not after the patent licensing kicks in.
Ok, so gas stations don't need to be modified because they will be deprecated? Thats the worst (or best. . . largest in magnitude) spin I've seen in a while. Might as well just omit anything about gas stations or just say "technology would be independent of current gasoline infrastructure".
Also, I don't see anything that mentions storage. To my knowledge, storage of hydrogen is a tricky business. What good is making fuel at home if it'll only last you 10 miles? I'm sure there are plenty of advances in the storage of hydrogen, but lets try to keep the summary relevant to the article. What is described (yes I read TFA) is a way to make metal with loads of surface area, that has applications in electrolyzing water. Also, TFA mentions the other applications of this new technology such as better chemical batteries. Non rechargables that perform 5x better than standard alkaline batteries and NiMH that perform better than current lithium batteries. One could argue that the battery technology application is more important due to the immediate applications, yet it was absent in the summary.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
The article says "Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car."
That's a completely baffling statement to me. So baffling as to trigger my BS detector.
Presumably the point of producing it in the car is to avoid the need to store the gaseous hydrogen. But electrolysing hydrogen requires energy--the hydrogen is not a source of energy so much as it is a storage medium for energy. So where would that energy come from?
From a gasoline-powered generator in your car? Or what?
Sounds like a smooth-talking snake-oil salesman who's answer to everything is "yes, we've solved that problem too."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
hydrogen is cheaper then gasoline.. oh wait..
Trouble is, it's still stuck using distilled water. I'm waiting for a hydrogen converter that can handle rainwater, or household greywater, or the aforementioned on-board pee tube.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."--Feynman
I have news for them. Increasing the surface area on an electrode does noting to increase the efficiency of the process, only that it makes the equipment able to be made a little smaller. What we need is to make more hydrogen with even less electricity. I don't care if the equipment is so large I can't put my car in the garage anymore, it just has to make enough hydrogen to get me to work and back everyday.
It's not exactly clear, but it sounds like the nano-particles make the electrolysis process more effective. The idea is that you would fill the car with distilled water, and get hydrogen from a self sustaining hydrogen burn.
QuantumSphere was founded in 2002 with just $100,000 of private funding and still has not taken in any venture capital, although it did have a public funding round last year.
There already public, so I bet this is part of a pink sheet pump and dump scam. I think they are sending out press releases to build up the price so they can sell. I read TFA and I saw nothing to overcome the perpetual motion aspects of this.
I already have the technology for making my own methane. Plus there are McDonald's everywhere.
And a pony.
With fricken laser beams on its head. Is that too much to fricken ask?
Related post: Nano particles could make hydrogen cheaper than [some other very expensive commodity whose price has been driven up artificially]
It has been argued that gasoline in the US has been kept artificially low... in the UK it's close to twice the price in the US, and prices in the rest of Europe are similar.
ABout 4 years ago, I was talking to a guy from NREL. He told me that the best ppl in NREL were predicting that fuel cell technology would be commericial feasible in about 15-20 years. Even today, fuel cells are still expensive and prone to issues with dirt. We still have a lousy storage mechanism efficiency. Even with this conversion, it has at best a 15% (does not include ANY other loses). Considering that Tesla and a number of other companies are introducing the electric cars with far less loses over the next few years, I would guess that fuel cells have lost their chance. I will say that we should not give up on them. They may prove useful in other areas, and it is probably better to have differing mechanisms for energy storage.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Hydrogen in our own garage? Fantastic idea! Just needs the right spark of an idea to set off a firestorm of homemade invention.
It might not be Jetsons, but I could see making a 30's styled "flying car" this way. Might lose bouyancy as you run out of fuel though.
Yes, we understand these tags always apply: fud, dupe, typo, slashdotted, topic name
No to speak for any of those companies, but if this or other technologies are as good as they claimed to be and if Exxon/Shell/big-oil buy the technology, why would they shelf it in the basement of their lawyer's office? These are just for-profit companies. As such, they don't really care what they sell. If shits can power cars better/cheaper than gasoline, they will sell the shits because they have a competitive advantages compared to others in their business. Why would they pay the Saudi emirates if they can just monopolize the production of energy at home?
Wow!!!! Making Helium from water.
Lets hear it for Nano!
The commentary on the original article, though, links to the the press release which clarifies it. The application they're talking about is a plug-in rechargable car. When you're at home, you plug it in, the car electrolyzes water to produce hydrogen, and then, when you unplug it, you run the car on the hydrogen.
The application, then, doesn't address the problem of how to store hydrogen, only the problem of how to produce it.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Once it's flying it's no longer a car. Once you strap wings on it's an airplane. Go buy a glider and ride those thermals. Just need a tow to get up there and then it runs on wind.
Huh? Even if you can produce hydrogen efficiently, you're still left with two other large problems: 1) where do you get the energy to produce it? And 2) how do you utilize it?
For the first question, presumably the energy comes out of your wall socket. That's great, since that can include green sources such as wind and solar. No problem there unless ... you're not at home.
For the second problem, well, now you're bubbling out all this hydrogen gas from water. How, exactly, are you going to convert that into a usable form? It doesn't do any good as a gas, unless you're in the 1920s airship business. So you're going to have a compressor or cryogenic liquifier system in your home that then transfers liquid hydrogen to your car? Well, maybe. And then there's the whole matter of getting cars to run on hydrogen. I'm not saying these are insurmountable problems. I'm just saying you've still got 90% of your problems ahead of you.
A-Bomb
1.Put batteries in cars. 2.Shut up. These two simple steps would put oil back in the realm of useless. And don't give me that "infrastructure" crap. if you had Solar panels like smart people, you wouldnt be loading the grid. sry, im having a bad day, and stupid people anger me.
The article does not say anywhere that you can produce hydrogen while driving.
My mistake (last post. Read the article and not the summary)
The article says that Kevin Maloney says "Instead of switching 170,000 gas stations over to hydrogen, using our electrodes could enable consumers to make their own hydrogen, either in the garage or right on [sic] the vehicle,"
Doesn't say 'while driving' It implies that you can supply some sort of power source, presumably plugging the car into an outlet to run the fuelcell backwards and produce hydrogen.
It's turtles all the way down!
-
Have you heard of gliders?
Warm Leatherette in the HindenCar!
Warm leatherette
Melts on your burning flesh
You can see your reflection
In the luminescent dash
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
There's some criticism as to the notion that hydrogen could be created right on board a moving vehicle represents perpetual motion. It doesn't. Those critics are just jumping to conclusions. The implication is that the coating supposedly improves electrolysis efficiency to such a degree that hydrogen could be created with a small enough on-board system on-demand. With today's elecrolyzers, to make enough hydrogen on-demand to run a vehicle, the hydrogen generation gear would be bigger than the vehicle, so efficiency improvement translates to size reduction which makes this approach plausible. The PEM fuel cell went through similar size reduction before it was ready for passenger vehicle use. Anyway, it means you would have to have a power supply such as a rechargeable battery to run the electrolyzer on. I did not take from the story that they were claiming a system where: 1) water + power in, 2)hydrogen out, 3) hydrogen in, 4) power out, repeat for a water-fueled system. It needs power.
Now, why would you want to do this instead of simply use the battery for electric drive? Well, one could make the argument that converting standard hyrdocarbon fuels from the pump to hydrogen ON the vehicle eliminates the need for fueling infrastructure change which is a MAJOR barrier to the widespread adoption of a "hydrogen economy". With hydrogen on the vehicle it could be used to power a fuel cell for electric drive or some other combustion engine such as BMW's multi-fuel hydrogen car. "Just add power" (solar? plug-in? other?) and if it's all done just right, what you get is more efficient fuel combustion with lower emissions than you would have gotten from burning the gasoline straight. That model I think could be viewed as a "stepping stone" towards conversion much like today's hybrid cars are regarded as a stepping stone towards all electric.
http://www.qsinano.com/news/newsletters/2008_02/f1.php
Cars already have a system for the initial activation of energy-consuming processes using energy generated earlier. (Of course, the exact parameters of required voltage and amperage might change, but the idea would be roughly the same.) While the gas-fed engine is running, it can using the same mechanism as is currently present supply electrical energy "backwards" into the storage pool and the gas generation system (gasoline itself requires a pump in this roll).
For the second problem, well, now you're bubbling out all this hydrogen gas from water. How, exactly, are you going to convert that into a usable form? It doesn't do any good as a gas, unless you're in the 1920s airship business. So you're going to have a compressor or cryogenic liquifier system in your home that then transfers liquid hydrogen to your car? Well, maybe. And then there's the whole matter of getting cars to run on hydrogen. I'm not saying these are insurmountable problems. I'm just saying you've still got 90% of your problems ahead of you.
You can store the gas directly to use in fuel cells; no need for a liquid form, since any conceivable way to liquefy it would only reduce the efficiency more. Yes, the tank will leak some of the gas, but losses should be acceptable, and likely won't be worse than trying to liquefy it.
Once you've got hydrogen, getting energy out of it is a solved problem (burn it, fuel cells, nuclear fusion, whatever). It's the getting and storing the stuff that was always problematic.
Not a typewriter
Gandhi going to do if he can't run a gas station???
It's still just a storage mechanism, and a volumetrically inefficient one at that. Why not just store the electricity in batteries? Storing gaseous hydrogen is about the only thing stupider than storing a flammable liquid (gasoline) in a vehicle moving at 120fps being guided by someone on a cellphone.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
In short, this is a more efficient way to perform electrolysis is a net energy saver versus current methods. If you need hydrogen for any industrial process, this is great news.
However, to take this one improvement in the realm of "electrolysis" and then take the leap to "cheap energy for our cars" is nothing short of a lie.
Obviously, this new technology is not sufficient to move a car. That's the fossil fuel industry talking - as they know that ridiculous claims around new energy technologies will disenfranchise both the public and investors on "alternative energy". Which will, in turn, protect the profits of the fossil fuel industry.
With these nanoparticle coatings, car owners could make their own hydrogen, either in their garage or even when driving
If you power the car from methane, then you don't need any nanoparticles - most drivers can make their own methane already.
The new "gas" stations would be Taco Bell drive thrus.
High probability.
But, you know, conversely, the present US government has expressed a desire to go in the direction of hydrogen. Mostly because it's a byproduct of petroleum production, so they'd not be seeing that cash cow go dry. By extention, this should mean the US government will get behind making nanoparticle-driven hydrogen cars... further marginalizing actual clean energy sources like electricity even further.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Everyone seems to have missed the point. With efficient electrolysis, you can build the entire system into the vehicle. You'd have a closed system that cracks the water and stores the H2 in a tank. The fuel cell burns the H2, creating pure water that goes back into the tank. You'd "fill up" at home (or office, or where ever) by running the electrolysis off of grid power (or however you get it), removing the need for the gas station. You could even use the power from regenerative breaking to crack the water again (assuming you could do it fast enough), meaning you wouldn't need to lug around extra batteries or ultra-capacitors.
Remember: you shouldn't think of hydrogen as a fuel, but rather as an energy storage mechanism (like a battery).
... to have the on board electrolyzer. You would have to think of the whole system as a rechargeable battery as opposed to immediately thinking of it as a perpetual motion machine. You plug your car in overnight, which generates the hydrogen for your next trip/commute. In the morning you unplug and have some hydrogen to go. You don't need a combustion engine, just your standard fuel cell + electric motor. I suppose you could add in a large solar panel roof to produce a little extra hydrogen on the go and when parked. By having it onboard you gain the ability to "charge" your car anywhere where there is power. /patent pending + copyrighted + .... + ???? :-b
But gaseous hydrogen at anything close to STP has such a low energy density. Without very high compression or liquefecation you'd be able to store enough to go what, a few miles?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Wings? Boy you guys ARE primitive!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Some commenters are confused about the idea of generating hydrogen while driving... Here is a scenario that may clear this up:
Consider a car propelled by electric motors. The motors get their power from a fuel cell. The hydrogen for the fuel cell may be generated and "topped off" at home from the grid. Once the vehicle is underway, the hydrogen level drops and may be partially replenished by electrolysis which is run as needed by a small gasoline or diesel engine. Possibly a tiny turbine could also generate electricity as needed when the hydrogen supplies get low.
So why not just power the motors directly from the engine or turbine? Because then you have to size the engine/turbine to meet the maximum required power for the vehicle. If you think about it, that 300 horsepower engine in your SUV rarely runs at full power. All the rest of the time it is hauling its excess weight wherever it goes.
With a car of this design, it is ALREADY carrying electric motors which are sized for the full load. So you are free to design the engine to only meet the average load.
It seems inefficient to carry both electric motors and an engine, even if it the engine is a small one. However the advantage with electric motors is that they can regenerate power when the car is braking, which is something that an engine cannot do. Another advantage to the engine designer is that he can design it to run at the most efficient speed while generating electricity. The engine is either off or running at its most efficient speed.
This doesn't change anything, except make Hydrogen cheaper for storing energy. 96% efficency does not make Hydrogen an energy source. One energy unit in, only 0.96 units of energy out. In comparison, for corn derived ethanol, 1 unit energy in, 1.3 units energy out.
Journal
Where does the energy come from to start the process of converting gasoline to drive a car. A battery? Why can't they do the same with hydrogen generation. Kick start the process with a battery and then use part of the generated electricity to keep it going.
costs will decrease, but to you and me gasoline will always be the same price. As long as the energy can be controlled by a small group of despots we will only ever see our costs continue rising.
last question first:
"What would the drug companies try to do to someone who invented a miracle pill that made people immune to every possible disease and disorder forever?"
Sell it. Do you think the current C*0s, and board give a rats ass about 10 years down the line when they can make a billion or 3 right now?
How many companies sold key manufacturing technolgies to overseas buyers in exchange for a large chuck of cash now? A hell of a lot, that's who.
So, you own this magic widget. You can sell it for 1000 dollars 100's of millions of dollars. cha-ching, YOu RIGHT NOW make huge cash in your pocket. I don't think there so altruistic as to think "I could put a billion in my account, but we better not so some guy I don't know can makes some money in 5 years after I have left"
Not to mention the 15,000,000 new cars are bought in the US every year, and if you owned this you would be getting royalties from each of those cars for 20 years. So the company will still get some money, but the people making the decisions now get a hell of a lot of money.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I propose using ancient deposits of carbon to lock up excess O2. Not only will this process remove excess O2 from the atmosphere but the process if exothermic and could also be used as a source of energy. In the mean time I suggest breathing as hard as possible at all times.
Personally I look forward to an oxygen rich atmosphere and the return of our dragonfly overlords.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
How about investing in fire hoses?
I'll wait until the first and final press conference.
Not only do you avoid all the issues of converting vehicles --a very big issue indeed-- you can also invert the normal equation and actually consume atmospheric CO2 in the process.
How bout them apples? Not only would such a technique halt the addition of CO2 into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, it would actually begin to actively reduce CO2 levels.
The chemistry is old school.
CO2 + 3H2 --> CH3OH + H2O
CH3OH is methanol.
Using catalysts, which is this company's specialty, it is possible to convert methano into gasoline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_to_gasoline
This way you change as little as possible on the consumer automotive side and yet still move to a post-pertroleum world without any new massive automotive technology roll out. That's a freakin' huge plus right there. A lot of people genuinely love their old cars. This way they can keep their old rides forever. As much as I love clean tech, I kind of have a love affair with my old car I've rebuilt so many times and there's a lot of people like that in this world. The easier we make it for everyone to participate, the faster the impact will happen. If you just go with gasoline, the switch can happen almost overnight.
If the hydrogen production process is really as efficient as they claim, it should be quite cheap on top of the environmental and political benefits. Moreover, you could install the production facilities very near existing gas tank farms located at the edges of large metro areas thus further maximizing efficiencies that petroleum can't hope to match be eliminating the need for extensive liquid fuels transport systems.
The CO2 could be produced through simple air compression. Local gasoline would once more be a reality.
OPEC would bury it.
I agree with your point regard SHELL/EXXON etc. But the nations the control OPEC made over 1/2 a trillion dollars last year. Of course if it is out there, they won't be able to bury it for long because someone else will take the data already other and do it again. If it has become a reality because supporting technology is finally in place, then it can't be buried for any long period of time.
Not anymore.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hydrogen cars really have nothing going for them. You can read the all the gruelling details here, but basically, li-ion batteries are about 99.9% efficient, while fuel cells are usually 40-50%. The tank to wheel efficiency of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is ~35-40%. 85% electrolysis efficiency is nothing new; that's what big steam reformers get, although it would be new for small "kit" systems. Then there's transmission losses for getting the power to the elecytrolyser (~93% efficient) and power plant losses (~35% efficient for existing systems, 45%+ for next-generation). Put it all together and hydrogen is notably *worse* for the environment than gasoline, while electric cars are better for it. And they almost have the range of hydrogen cars, automotive li-ions (as opposed to laptop li-ions) -- nanophosphates, titanates, spinels, and so on -- are far safer than hydrogen (for many, many reasons). And they can recharge as fast as you can feed them juice to boot, and have almost the range of the best hydrogen cars, with no need for platinum at all, with next-gen batteries vastly outranging hydrogen. And on, and on. Hydrogen cars are a dead-end, environmentally destructive technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_7
That's cool, but what sorts of efficiency are we talking about here? How much energy input does it take to go from H2 + CO2, to CH3OH + H20. I notice on the methanol to gasoline article it mentions a catalyst that builds up a coating of carbon during the process and then must be "cleaned", but can only be cleaned so many times before it's toast. How expensive is this catalyst (this was after all the problem these new catalysts were created to solve, they're a whole lot cheaper than the old catalysts), and is it possible to "clean" the carbon off these things in a way that doesn't reintroduce it back into the atmosphere?
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Roland Piquepaille, who submitted this story, is PAID to do public relations. In my opinion, he has been responsible for other dubious stories, such as these (The links are to my comments.):
Imaging Breakthrough "Sees" Lung Disease
A Single-Photon Server
Would You Wear Video Glasses?
Here is Mr. Piquepaille's web site.
to whomever tagged this article with "vaporware." Cracked me up. -Ian
Not enough to carry much current.
I'm a sucker for these kinds of posts. I have worked for a global oil and gas software dev company (worst experience of my short life) and I can honestly say, there is more oil out there than we know what to do with. That being said, I can't wait for an alternative.
Also as a side note, would it not be easier to move and store mass quantities of H2 compared to hydro-carbon derivatives? If so, then I can imagine starting to put reservoirs on the moon, for limited colonization.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
An ICE is a pump. It can be run as a pump and pump air into a pressure tank which can later be bled off. So an ICE actually can use regenerative techniques.
I agree with your overall conclusion that hydrogen cars are probably not going to happen, ever. Hydrogen is difficult to make, difficult to transport, difficult to dispense, difficult to store on vehicle, and difficult to utilize. We have not really solved any of these issues. And as you said, the only real advantage is that it burns clean (sort of, if you burn it in an ICE you will likely still have NOx issues).
Sunlight comes in about 6000K. Does anyone know if there is any potential to use a chemical process to harness sunlight to disassociate water?
Also I was trying to figure out what the equivalent "voltage" of such a heat source would be.
Thanx.
But even if this works, what is the point? Why not use electric cars?
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Yeah, perhaps the zeolite catalyst puts full gasoline conversion out of the picture. Maybe it doesn't, I don't know the answer to tell you the truth. I'm just speculating, but think of all the up-sides on this approach.
Look how convenient it would be to power this hydrogen separation process with photovoltaic solar. One of the biggest catches with solar panels is their limited hours of operation. By converting that electricity straight to hydrogen with this super efficient catalyst, you overcome this limitation of photovoltaics and partly offset the high initial cost of PV through the efficiency of this catalyst.
On the CO2 side, how about using conventional solar thermal (ie parabolic mirrors) for low temperature steam to power pump compressors. Again, you overcome some of the conventional problems that come with the attempts to convert steam directly into electricity. Instead of electricity and all the hassles associated with turbines, you simply use large cylinder compressors in the fashion of nineteenth century low pressure steam compressors to do nothing but compress large volumes of air rendering a steady solar powered supply of easily separated liquid CO2. Nothing fancy on this side of things.
So, you've got your clean H2 supply and you've got clean CO2 and your input energy used in conjunction with this fancy catalyst is nothing but solar. Seems like it could be pretty cheap and quite clean. You've avoided a lot of the problems associated with traditional solar cycles because you don't need to keep it running around the clock.
But the second best part --and this should not be understated at all-- is the ability to make it locally. This ia very major issue. This is a clean technology that actually absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere while creating local jobs and reducing transportation costs. Oil, after all, requires an enormous amount of transportation which is one of the reasons why it does have costs at the pump despite coming from the earth basically for free.
The single best part would be if you could make the conversion all the way to gasoline for a price below what oil imported from around the world costs and thus leave the existing automotive industry intact. That is really the holy grail because it could be implemented nationally in as little as a few years time which would bascially be akin to a miracle.
5...4...3...2...
Pony-shaped hydrogen balloon, available for 25,000 drachma from the Trojan Balloon Works, division of Homer Industries.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
From TFA:
If QuantumSphere can get around the Ovonics patents on NiMH and give use a battery with the KWH/Kg of Li-ion at NiMH prices, we will have a much easier time buying an electric (or plug-in hybrid) car.If you add in regenerative breaking and using gravitional energy when going down hills, it might be possible to do _some_ on board generation of hydrogen but not a lot.
IF efficency >= 96%
ANDIF it will fit in a car
ANDIF this will survive peer review
THEN
It certainly would be best to put it in the car.
It would solve the number 1 with hydrogen, how to store enough in a car to drive a decent distance before refueling.
And in Seattle, you could just have the car collect it's own runoff from the rain and refuel automatically!
ENDIF
Answer: They're not an OIL company, they're an ENERGY company. They understand this. If something else displaces oil they don't want it to displace THEM. Instead they want a piece of the new thing, too. They're just as happy to invest in developing and manufacturing solar panels and pocket some money when you buy them (or to run solar farms and sell electricity) as they are to invest it in exploring for oil and taking a cut when you buy that (while passing on the bulk to the people sitting on the land over the oil.) And meanwhile it gives them a power source to run some of their own remote equipment. B-)
There's a lot of money in oil. But there's little margin. Virtually all of it goes to pay for the crude feedstock and the infrastructure to extract, refine, and ship it. (That's OK. Like groceries, oil goes from purchased raw material to sold product in a short time. So the company's money gets cycled through the buy/refine/sell process several times a year, making a small profit margin add up to a good rate of return on investment.)
As with solar panels, energy companies have more incentive to develop new processes than to buy and sit on them. Because they won't be the ONLY processes to achieve results. So if company A buys process a to develop product whiz-bang, then sits on it, company B eats their lunch when it buys and develops process b and owns the market as whiz-bang displaces refined oil.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A hydrogen fuel cell is electric. It takes the place of a battery. The previous problem was that without an easily available source of pure H2, the whole process is too energy intensive to be feasible. This catalyst changes that. Lithium-based batteries are still more efficient, but there's not enough Lithium in the Earth's crust to make all the batteries we need for cars. Hydrogen fuel cells don't contain anything we can't easily get (except platinum, and the catalyzer mentioned in the article replaces that, too), so they're the next best battery technology after Lithium.
Also, one of the nice benefits of a purely electric car is that it should be (relatively) easy to rip out one type of battery and replace it with another.
Not a typewriter
I think I have a intermediate solution. If this process is anywhere near as efficient as it claims (~85%+), why not convert existing gas stations from hydrocarbon storage/pumping to water storage/hydrogen pumps. Say have the station have a large tank (or pipes from a source) that electrolyzes the water into a dispensing tank. Sure it would take energy on the gas stations side, but they can charge accordingly and it solves the whole 'lets ship hydrogen' problem quite nicely. Then the only problem is getting that pesky H2 gas into the car and keeping it there.
Intriguing as it sounds, regenerative braking doesn't really help all that much. It's probably not worth doing unless you get it almost for free.
On my Prius, I typically see an average of less than two of those "50 Wh regenerated" symbols per five minutes of driving, or perhaps 1000 per hour of commuting driving. Figure 50 mph, so over a total of 50 miles, with maybe 1.1 gallons of gas consumed, 1000 watt-hours is regenerated.
One gallon of gas = 125,000 BTU = 36650 watt-hours, so the regenerated energy is equivalent to about 1/36th of a gallon, and thus contributes perhaps 3% or about 1.5 mpg to the fuel efficiency.
Other Prius owners have reported similar calculations; this is the right ballpark, anyway.
So even if you triple the regeneration efficiency (I believe on the Prius the efficiency of the regeneration-storage-reuse cycle is about 30%), you are still only talking about an improvement of 3 mpg over the Prius.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Too bad this is morally unacceptable for two thirds of the American population.
From this article, the question Why are so many of the leaders of the energy revolution the same folks who led the dotcom boom? is precisely why we're getting all of these claims. I'll believe it when I can buy it. Until then, it's bullsh*t.
Of course, the plug-in-in-your-garage model is kind of annoying if you're like me, and keep the car in the driveway and the other can on the street while you use the garage for storage
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
FTFA: "Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car."
THAT is the answer. THAT should be the goal. Doesn't get any more practical, convenient, or safe than THAT. Hydrogen/water is the answer/life. God, the cosmos, the universe, Allah...whatever you believe in has left us subliminal messages stating such. Hydrogen is the rares element in the universe, yet it is the most abundant element on Earth. Earth is a giant hydrogen nucleus with one electron - the Moon. Earth is like 90% covered by water. Water is mostly hydrogen.
You say that companies would sell the wonder widgets now and screw all for the future, but nothing in corporate history really supports. You're using the percieved fallacy that companies only care about the immediate revenue. That's very true if your name is "Middle-class-Bob" but when it comes to product they stick with the same thing for as long as possible and really only desire to kill competition. Them buying such a technology and hiding it or ruining/discrediting the people making it are far more likely to occur than them selling. Do you really need to look any further than your mp3 collection and the numerous RIAA articles to see how much industry leadership resists change? Speaking of long term, car companies, fast food, and wal-mart all started their market conquests with the idea to not have the best product, service, or technology, but rather to make sure there tech and product was the only one that mattered.
Stoplights could be a problem, though.
Lubricants can be done effectively without oil these days, most of the companies that sell motor oil provide at least one line of synthetic oil.
You misunderstand the meaning of "synthetic" oils. They are synthetic in that they are lab-created from stock ingredients to specific and precise formulations, rather than refined directly from crude oil as in a "traditional" oil. That said, the base stock chemicals still come from petroleum, such as an alkene, an ester, or the newer gas-to-liquid where a light-chain gas fraction is separated, hydrated and catalyticaly converted into a desired liquid.
The advantages of synthetic oils are that you can pretty much completely eliminate undesirable compounds, and you can precisely tailor chemical ratios to achieve a desired behavior. Neither of those are possible/feasible with distillation, since a "bad" compound might have a boiling point within a hair-fraction of a degree of something "good", and a lot of different "good-for-different-purposes" chemicals have very close boiling points as well.
You are right about plastics being relatively easy to make from non-petroleum carbon sources -IIRC the first plastic was made from cellulose- but there are many types of plastic that can't be made with something that simple/natural, and don't even get me started on the problems of using corn for bio-fuels and carbon stock. There are better plants, but that's what you get for letting Iowa choose the presidential candidates.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
For the retailer, perhaps; a friend owns a gas station and told me they make 1-3 cents per gallon. That's a razor-thin margin of 0.3% to 1%, at current prices.
However, there's a ton of margin for the oil companies. Just look at their record profits for 2007 to tell the real story: yes, the price is going up due to conflicts and reduction in supply and other factors; but their profitability tells a different story, and profits tend to tell a real story (except in unsustainable cases like Enron).
I think eliminating subsidies to the oil companies is a smart move; I read today that the House is passing it, and Democrats are trying to avoid a filibuster in the senate. Only for the top 5 oil companies, though; I'd rather see all oil subsidies eliminated, in favor of "renewable energy" subsidies (it's not really renewable, the sun will burn out someday and take the Earth with it we recently re-learned, but it's "essentially renewable").
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
hydrogen is the most plentiful fucking element in the entire universe!
who actually believes it should be more expensive than gasoline?
They're using their grammar skills there.
It already is cheaper than gasoline, providing you go for the special offer of one free oxygen atom with every two hydrogen.
So since hydrogen is lighter than air does this mean that my car is lighter with a full tank than when it's nearly empty? ;-)
(I am of course presuming that the spent fuel is replaced by air rather than the remaining fuel being contained at a lower pressure)
That would make for an interesting change in the logistics of racing cars
Some figures (disclaimer: out of memory so they are not 100% accurate but anyways) When using hydrogen based on water and electrolyse - hydrogen must be consideres as an energy carrier, not an energy source, because ...
The energy produced by using hydrogen withn a fuel cell is theoretical equal to the energy used for the electrolyse.
Why ?
If the fuel cell would produce more energy than used by electrolyse, then we should just recycle the water produced from the fuel cell back to electrolyse and only use a fraction of the energy produced by the fuel cell to maked hydrogen out of the recycled water, agian and again and again ... In my (danish) naitive language it is called a mechine of eterny.
So we will theoretical get as much energy out as used for electrolyse.
In praxis effeciency will come in.
The fuel cell has an efficeency in the range 55-80% depending on technology, temperatures etc.
Plants for electrolyse has an effeciency below 75%.
So in best case today for every 1 kWh you use for electrolyse you will have not more than 0.6kWh to be used for your electrical engines to move your care.
A more realistic guess is maybe 50% in total efficiency.
1 kg hydrogen at atsmopheric pressure fill2 12500 liter (or approx 3200 gallons).
1 kg hydrogen gives about 11.8 MJ (or 33 kWh) in a fuel cell.
1 kh hydrogen production takes about 20 MJ(or 55 kWh)
So it is more than crazy to carry batteries in a car for hydrogen production instead of just powering the electrical wheel engines.
For comparison reasons
1 kg gasoline gives about 45 MJ
1 kg diesel gives about45 MJ
With an efficieny of about 33% for a traditional modern diesel/gasolin engine 1 kg fuel gives about 15 MJ.
So 100 kg gasoline equals roughly to 100 kg hydrogen which fills 1.250.000 liter/1 atmosphere or 4166 liters at 300 bar I guess - if we have very high efficient fuel cells.
Looking forward to see the gas/hydrogen stations along the highway. NAd it also costs lost of energy to compress the hydrogen...
If we will carry it as water you carry 1 oxygen for every two hydrogen atoms - So the equvivalent of 100 kg hydrogen is 1700kg water... which fills less than the half of the hydrogen gass...
So there are some problems to be solved - so to say :-)
The positive thing is no CO2 and pollution - which may be be why we ought to do it.
Jens @ Denmark
Disclaimer: positive about energy savin
It is always difficult to discuss without any figures - so I hope I can help with this post
Some figures to think about (disclaimer: out of memory so they are not 100% accurate but anyways)
When using hydrogen based on water and electrolyze - hydrogen must be considered as an energy carrier, not an energy source,
because ...
The energy produced by using hydrogen withn a fuel cell is theoretical equal to the energy used for the electrolyse.
Why ?
If the fuel cell would produce more energy than used by electrolyze, then we should just recycle the water produced from the fuel cell back to electrolyze and only use a fraction of the energy produced by the fuel cell to make hydrogen out of the recycled water, agian and again and again ...
In my (danish) native language it is called a machine of eternity.
So we will theoretical get as much energy out as used for electrolyze.
In praxis efficiency will come in. The fuel cell has an efficiency in the range 55-80% depending on technology, temperatures etc.
Plants for electrolyze has an efficiency below 75%.
So in best case today for every 1 kWh you use for electrolyze you will have not more than 0.6kWh to be used for your electrical engines to move your care.
A more realistic guess is maybe 50% in total efficiency.
1 kg hydrogen at atmospheric pressure fills 12500 liter (or approx 3200 gallons). 1 kg hydrogen gives about 11.8 MJ (or 33 kWh) in a fuel cell. ...
1 kg hydrogen production takes about 20 MJ(or 55 kWh)
So it is more than crazy to carry batteries in a car for hydrogen production instead of just powering the electrical wheel engines.
For comparison reasons:
1 kg gasoline gives about 45 MJ 1 kg diesel gives about45 MJ.
With an efficiency of about 33% for a traditional modern diesel/gasoline engine 1 kg fuel gives about 15 MJ.
So 100 kg gasoline equals roughly to 100 kg hydrogen(for fuel cell use) which fills 1.250.000 liter/1 atmosphere or 4166 liters at 300 bar I guess.
Looking forward to see the gas/hydrogen stations along the highway. And it also costs lost of energy to compress the hydrogen...
If we will carry it as water you carry 1 oxygen atom for every two hydrogen atoms - So the equivalent of 100 kg hydrogen is 1700kg water... which fills less than the half of the hydrogen gases...
So there are some problems to be solved - so to say :-)
The positive thing is no CO2 and pollution - which may be be why we ought to do it.
Jens @ Denmark Disclaimer: positive about saving energy and minimize pollution
their overall profit isn't what they focus on. Considering that politicians focus on PROFIT and not the PROFIT MARGIN would be a big clue that the industry would be more than happy with less of the first if the second was greater as the idiocy of the American public could not be exploited by dishonest politicians.
Look at it this way, Exxon paid nearly 29 billion on 41 billion in profits. They paid more in taxes than nearly half of American taxpayers. It is by indirect taxation that real load on the taxpayer must be determined.
Back to your point, big oil ain't going anywhere because they long ago began diversifying when they saw the writing on the wall. Look at all the emerging energy techonologies, from storing to producing, and you will find a big oil company somewhere in the chain trying to find the next big thing.
People love to claim big oil is trying to stop innovation but they miss the point that big oil is desperately seeking the next big thing to deliver and do so before anyone else. They realize quite correctly that vehicle usage across the world will continue to rise and whomever can deliver the primary method of propuslion is in for some big returns.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I for one welcome Our nanoparticle-coated electrode Overlords.
This is great! Now what we need is an efficient way to convert H2 gas into a dense, storable, safe, easy to transport and use form like liquid hydrocarbons or ethanol.
...
Homer industries? Isn't Homer Gail's brother in law?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Using catalysts, which is this company's specialty, it is possible to convert methano into gasoline. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_to_gasoline
Assuming there is any point in doing the conversion. Spark ignition engines can run on methanol perfectly well. Even high performance racing car engines...
Populr claim from the 1950s when it was mistakely though nuclear-generated electricity would solve the world's power problems.
Nano= small (10^-9) Particle= a minute portion, piece, fragment, or amount; a tiny or very small bit. Therefore a nanoparticle is a small minute portion? The only gas I see coming from this technology isn't hydrogen, and it stinks!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
But wait a minute: north america suffers brown outs with current electricity loads and electricity is relatively stable here than in most of the world. All this makes electric cars are a very tough sell with current technology.
Just a quick follow-up. I did go look further into the zeolite catalyst used in converting methanol to gasoline. It's one of the cheapest catalysts around. The process as it has been pursued so far does eventually require the catalyst to be replinished, but it is synthesized from alumina and silicate ores which are the most common minerals in the earth's crust. It's not a particularly expensive catalyst.
Here's a little blurb on the plant that they built in New Zealand. They were using natural gas as a starting material for their methanol.
The New Zealand plant was a technical success but produced gasoline at costs above $30 per barrel and required large subsidies from the New Zealand government.
http://www.chemlink.com.au/gtl.htm
The beauty of using this nanotech catalyst to obtain hydrogen and oxygen as starting materials would be that you could establish a sythesis plant anywhere there was a source of water which would cut transportation costs to almost nothing. That's a huge part of the liguid fuels energy equation.
Thirty bucks a barrel seemed like a fortune in 1985, but these days . . .
Anyway, they were using natural gas, so they didn't credit for being on the right side of the environmental equation, this technology could potentially alter that aspect of it as well.
There are other ways to obtain CO2 than compressing the air like adsorption but using compression based on solar has the steam punk aesthetic, but I love the combo. It's the nano/steam punk global energy green anti-CO2 solution and it says yes to gas guzzling cars! What's not to love.
Indeed. That's true.
But it doesn't look like this conversion is a show stopper after all. It was a good question and I appreciate the motivation to look into it further, but it looks like on the balance economically it really would make more sense to go all the way to a high octane gasoline formula rather than sticking with methanol.
It's all about economics of course. Lots of things are technically possible like hybrids or this company's idea bout fuel cells, but the idea that will eventually really matter is the one that is cheaper than all the rest. The cheapest thing is to change as little as possible. By completely avoiding any change on the automotive side, you're cutting straight to massive volumes instead of trying to rebuild an infrastructure that eventually scales up to massive volumes. We already have a market that requires huge volumes of a product. The product has become problematic, but that doesn't mean the demand for that product can't be satisfied by a replacement product that doesn't have those problems. Rather than trying to start over with a new generation of autos, you get a far quicker reaction from the market by simply making the change up-stream.
These previous syngas efforts fail on the clean energy side. They're not exciting to environmentally minded consumers at all because it's just converting one hydrocarbon to another. You're still emitting vast quantities of formerly sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere. So, the only thing slightly interesting in these previous efforts has been their cost advantages.
Now this nanotechnological application comes along with a far cheaper method of hydrolysis and it opens the possibility of using atmospheric CO2 as starting materials --wow, the whole thing becomes far sexier from an environmental standpoint. Then it's no longer just strictly about costs compared to petroleum. At that point you have to start asking what it's worth to society as a green technology that creates local jobs and prevents the CO2 emissions and doesn't require fancy new automotive technology that a lot of people can't really afford. At that point, maybe you go beyond asking just how much it costs and start looking at whether it might even be worth some subsidies to make it happen fast.
I guess I could see how, if you combined it with say, solar cells on the roof, or using braking to reclaim some of the used energy, you could make this a useful technology for short range vehicles that produce their own hydrogen, with the occassional needed plug in boost from a wall socket when trickle charging isn't enough to keep the tank topped off.
Remember, most driving is short-range, under 20 miles or so, and many cars sit in the sun all day.
The question would be why wouldn't you just use electric for the same purpose?
I guess the answer depends on how efficient it is to convert hydrogen in a combustion engine into motive power, versus using electricity directly to do the same.
If the combustion engine more efficiently spins the wheels than the available electric direct drive systems, it might make up for the 4% decrease in direct energy efficiency from the fuel source.
I'm not an automotive engineer by any means, so I don't know the answer to that question.
Currently there are some substantial tax incentives for companies to build oil refineries in the United States. The proposition that passed the house yesterday seeks to cut those tax breaks from the big oil companies and give them to renewable energy development. That's fine by me; either we are paying to import oil then refining it ourselves or we are paying to import gasoline. In both cases we are still very dependent upon foreign oil. If this passes in the Senate as well expect prices of gasoline to go up (which is probably why it won't pass) as the gas companies pass this extra cost onto their customers. If this could be passed I think it's a step in the right direction. It's too short sighted to not invest in renewable energy.
So you want a glider tied to a pony?
Come on man, I'm trying to quit!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
However, there's a ton of margin for the oil companies. Just look at their record profits for 2007 to tell the real story: yes, the price is going up due to conflicts and reduction in supply and other factors; but their profitability tells a different story, and profits tend to tell a real story (except in unsustainable cases like Enron).
I think you're missing my point. There's profit MARGIN, and there's Return On Investment (ROI).
ROI is what matters for the "record profits" on the balance sheet. Sell more refined oil and that will rise, even if the margin remains the same.
Profit margin matters when prices are set and is multiplied by "inventory turns" to produce the gross profit that feeds into the calculation of the net profit on the balance sheet (after costs other than the incremental cost of making that particular thing are deducted).
If you have 12 turns per year (it takes a month to go from crude oil at the wellhed to refined product at the pump) a 2% profit margin on the money spent for the crude and its processing becomes a 24% rate of return on the portion of the company's capital spent on the crude and its processing. If you cut the turn time to half a month the 2% margin becomes a 48% rate of return - and your gross profits will double IF you can sell twice as much oil. When you consider how much oil a company processes you can see how this can add up to very large bucks.
But drop the price of the product 2% and the company makes nothing, no matter how much product they sell. Meanwhile their other expenses haven't gone away. So they make record losses and go broke very fast.
So record profits don't necessarily mean price gouging. (In fact they may mean the company had capacity to make more than they were selling, so it LOWERED its prices in order to sell enough more that they more than made up the difference.) Setting prices is a balancing act between losing your margin and losing your customers - and this is the force that drives down prices when there is real competition - or the threat of it, when prices must be low enough to avoid the creation of new competitors.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way