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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."
*cough*bullshit*cough*
What's with all the science articles lately that are basically investor scams?
Exactly as likely as you having an unfortunate accident, because you're a crazy conspiracy nutcase.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
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
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!
"Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car."
So instead of a tank of pressurized hydrogen gas you have a tank of distilled water in your car and it's broken down into hydrogen on demand. No need to store/transport/etc. hydrogen at all if this is really the case.
Yes, I read it, but it seems you didn't comprehend it. You need energy to perform electrolysis, which in turn releases hydrogen. If the car is powered by hydrogen, and you propose extracting it on the go via electrolysis, where is the power for the electrolysis coming from? Unless you get more energy out of the hydrogen powered engine per unit of hydrogen, then it takes to extract that hydrogen via electrolysis, then it won't work, you have an energy deficit in the system. That was my point, but you totally missed it.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Thats stupid. Why would you use energy to make hydrogen to make electricity in a fuel cell to run an electric motor when you could of just used that same energy to run the motor in the first place?
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?
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.
I don't know. Shipping hydrogen probably isn't all the more dangerous than ethanol. Ehtanol is some nasty sh*t in large quantities. Far more dangerous than gasoline. Obviously you can't use water on gasoline or ethanol fires, you have to use foam. Well, the foam used on gasoline fires doesn't work on grain-based ethanol fires. The ethanol flame burns right through the foam and conitnues to burn. To put out an ethanol fire you need an alchol-resistant polymer foam which is very expensive. Not many firestations are equiped to handle this sort of thing and as E85 becomes more popular, larger amount of ethanol are going to be shipped long haul.
Hydrogen on the other hand is very bouyant, disperses very quickly and won't puddle on the ground. If this article proves true and they can produce hydrogen that efficiently, shipping it is a moot point. Just produce the hydrogen on site and do away with the shipping all together.