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A New Way To Produce Hydrogen
Iddo Genuth writes "Scientists at Pennsylvania State University and Virginia Commonwealth University are producing hydrogen by exposing clusters of aluminum atoms to water. Rather than relying on the electronic properties of the aluminum, this new process depends on the geometric distribution of atoms within the clusters. It requires the presence of 'Lewis acids' and 'Lewis bases' in those atoms (water can act as either). Unlike most hydrogen production processes, this method can be used at room temperature and doesn't require the application of heat or electricity to work. The researchers experimented with a variety of different aluminum cluster patterns, discovering three that result in hydrogen production."
Interesting scientifically but hardly practical for energy systems. Aluminium requires huge amounts of energy to produce, to the point where is is essentially "frozen electricity". Given that their end result is aluminium oxide, aren't they just recovering some of the energy that into refining?
The problem is the aluminum can't be used over and over again, a problem which the scientists are working to solve.
Still not economically viable, but hopefully continued research in hydrogen will replace the hype about plant based ethanol, which is not really a solution (because we need to eat corn, etc).
Qxe4
IANAC but the article sounds like it's another way of oxidising Aluminium. I can see this being very impractical for a few reasons. Main one it's incredibly hard to store aluminium in a way where it won't oxidise, especially as this would work would need it to be powdered and without that layer of oxidised aluminium on the top, it's incredibly reactive and dangerous.
You're then left with a large pile of Oxidised aluminium which I don't believe has any use apart from the production of 'pure' aluminium (which requires lots of electricity). Ultimately I can't see this offering much benefit over existing methods of hydrogen production
.. pull my finger.
Smells like someone's grant is about to run out. Solution: the press-release, stir things up a little, generate some news and attention, it's a common way to generate hype, interest, etc. As has been pointed out, they won't solve the fact that the aluminum in the process is not merely catalytic, but used up by the process. Little thing called oxidation. If only they had a bit MORE MONEY to solve the problem... for the next 30 years or so, put their kids through college, yada, yada ;P
If you ever found a way to separate water into its constituent molecules at room temperature, no energy input needed, no chemical input needed, etc., you'd have just solved the world's energy problems for all time.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Yes, three times the energy density of gasoline by mass but only one third the energy density by volume (and that's for liquid hydrogen).
Yes, fuel cells can be three times as efficient as burning gasoline, but it takes 2.5 times as much energy to make a hydrogen fuel cell than you'll ever get out of it over its lifetime. Where's that energy coming from? Milking invisible pink unicorns?
Ford has dropped development of hydrogen cars in favour of going straight to all electric.
Hydrogen is over before it even begun. It's less efficient than electric by any measure, and if you're betting on a big breakthrough (this isn't it) then the smart money is on capacitors (powered by wind, wave, solar, geothermal), not some magic leap forward in hydrogen production or fuel cell construction. At this point, it really is an academic proposition.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
You mean a quarter of the costs. For the same amount, the energy usage will actually go up (extreme inefficiency in China) as will the pollution (extremely dirty coal with little to no scrubbers). The real irony would be that moving to hydrogen is suppose to clean up the air, but schemes like this would actually increase it significantly.
Yes, I know that you meant to be funny, yet, somebody will be thinking of the same thing. Oddly enough as a child, I use to generate hydrogen doing this "NEW" way. We got it from a 50's book on how to create a floating balloon.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
To use water and aluminium as energy storage. We already have a pretty good global aluminium infrastructure.
If water could be combined with aluminium to produce hydrogen on demand, then you refuel by replacement of the aluminium oxide waste with fresh aluminium and refilling the water tank.
Then you still need a better method to convert aluminium oxide to aluminium - but here's the great thing about this research. Better ways to convert in one direction usually lead to better ways to go the other way too (eg, microdots convert electricity to light better, but also the other way round too).
Seriously, why? I am assuming that you do not commute more than 100 km each day, and are not off-roading. So why do you need 500 km? A 100 would do nicely for 95% of the world.
A super cap can take the power as fast as you deliver it. Personally, I suspect that new highend power stations would be develop for this, so that if doing a 100km/charge, then a fill up would likely take under a minute.
What is FAR more important is that car companies MUST come up with a STANDARD HIGH-END plug AND way to plug in? IOW, the smart thing is for the industry to figure a plug that is used by all the cars, and preferably allows for automatic hook-up (car IDs self, open cap, robotic arm moves power cable in and recharges). That is why Musk really should hook up with several other small car companies and set the standard NOW. Keep in mind that a HIGH-END plug is very different than the house plug. Ideally I would put it on the back of the car, along with a trailer hitch. That would allow a person to pull a trailer with power to move across the country.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Not really. It is reported as in range of 0.2% UP TO 6%. So it's already worse than our photovoltaic cells. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
This is not an article about making Hydrogen cheaply or efficiently, it's an article about an unusual chemical reaction, one of whose byproducts is Hydrogen.
You cant get something for nothing. For each Hydrogen atom let off, you have to spend an atom of Aluminum. Aluminum weighs 27 times as much as Hydrogen, so for every kilogram of Aluminum you burn up you get at most 38 grams of Hydrogen. Aluminum costs almost a dollar a kilo. That makes the Hydrogen cost at least $27 a Kilo. The market price for Hydrogen is around $2 a Kilo, so this process costs about 13 times too much.
It's just so entertaining to watch people find "free energy" in some form or another, by consuming some commonly available thing to produce energy, all the while completely ignoring the energy required to make the consumable.
Someone once described to me a process by which you use electrolysis to create hydrogen from water, and then burn that to create electricity, the surplus of which you can then use to create more hydrogen. (and you can even improve your yield by using the pure oxygen you are getting as a byproduct when creating the hydrogen!) And water is the free fuel! *SMACK*
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Come on. You can generate hydrogen by dumping aluminium foil in either sodium hydroxide (cheap plumbing cleaner) or in water containing minute amounts of HgCl2 acting as a catalyst. This is elementary and was known for decades. Those guys just found out that if they use insanely fine aluminium powder they don't need sodium hydroxide or mercuric chloride anymore. But this gets us nowhere, as we still need the aluminium, and making this insanely fine powder isn't free (both financially and energetically). The immediate practical value of this work in the field of energy storage is near zero. The only thing going for it is that the authors know how to generate interest.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Hydrogen production was reported earlier from cutting aluminum underwater: Uehara, K., Takeshita, H., and Kotaka, H. (2002). Hydrogen gas generation in the wet cutting of aluminum and its alloys. Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 127:174-177. While it certainly is not an efficient way to generate hydrogen in mass quantities, if you already need to cut aluminum for some other purpose (e.g., construction or repair, especially underwater) you can recover some hydrogen as a small side benefit. The same reaction may also lead to a useful sensing mechanism in the future.
This has the potential to be big but of course the valid questions are not mentioned, such as what are the inputs to get this hydrogen and does it scale. Still sounds rather Cold Fusiony...
On the contrary, ethanol as a fuel is not only a solution, it's a mature technology [wikipedia.org]. My first 100% ethanol-burning car was a Brazilian 1983 Chevette, which I bought used in 1985. The last time gasoline was sold in Brazil without at least 10% of ethanol was in 1976 [wikipedia.org]
But you're ignoring many, many facts to make your argument. It works in Brazil because of their climate and readily available sugar cane; which is a great source for ethanol. Corn on the other hand, is a poor source of ethanol and based on current production, actually increases the cost of gas per gallon. In other words, ethanol is more expensive per gallon than is gas. Even worse, contrary to popular myth, it still takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than you get out of it. Only in labs and in small scale research projects have they been able to achieve 100% efficiency, and no one is doing better than that in real, full scale production.
To make matters worse, corn requires vast quantities of water, is easily pest ridden, and can drastically suffer from drought. Assuming ethanol is the future of fuels for America makes one out to be an idiot; short of drastic technological improvements. Nothing about corn and ethanol make any sense unless your a corn farmer.
And far, far worse, the US is running out of water in its largest underwater aquifer. What does this mean? It likely means wider adoption of corn for fuel likely means wide spread famine and hugely increased food costs down the road. How so? If the nation becomes dependent on corn for ethanol and we suffer from wide spread drought (a very realistic scenario), do you honestly believe the nation will allow everything to come to a halt? Which is more likely, use of water, taken from our aquifers to create ethanol, or a country willing to pay $20/gallon? Exactly.
In the end, ethanol is as much a viable fuel source as farting into one's gas can. At least the later is economically feasible and doesn't run the risk of depleting out water supplies or endangering national security.
First of all, I just recently bought a car that runs on 100% ethanol, a Brazilian 2009 Peugeot 207.
You can travel through 100% of the country driving a car that runs on 100% ethanol. This has been true for the last 30 years.
Brazilian ethanol is obtained from sugarcane. Sugarcane does not produce food. It can produce either sugar or brandy, when it's not used for fuel.
How many cars total are actually running? There are a few million 100% ethanol cars in Brazil today and for the last 30 years.
There are over 35000 ethanol stations in Brazil
ROTFL
You can make ethanol at home. But why bother, when there's all the infrastructure in place? Does anybody make gasoline at home?
Really? Which ones don't have ethanol cars?
I could go on, but this gets tiresome. Ethanol has been a reality for a generation, hydrogen is a pipe dream.
On the contrary; that reasoning makes the assumption that gasoline must be replaced, regardless of the inferiority of the replacement.
You claimed that we treat gasoline as a single solution to all transportation needs; we don't, so I generously assumed that you intended to include all the liquid petroleum fuels, which do make up an overwhelming share of current transportation energy needs. If it's only gasoline you meant, you're beating on a strawman.
Right, like obtaining grants and subsidies.
Electricity was generated from hydrogen fuel cells, but the actual motive power was provided by hydrazine and nitrogen peroxide.
How energy efficient is the dis/charge cycle using this new process? And how dense an energy storage medium could such a battery be, say, compared to Li-Ion batteries (or to gasoline, the champ)?
If dis/charge is at all close to 90%+, and storing about 400Mj (the way a 16 gallon gas tank does at 20% internal combustion efficiency), in anything close to approximately 40 pounds for gas, then it's a replacement. Since the electricity powers lighter motors (electric instead of gas), and conserves nearly all the regenerative braking power, its capacity needs to be only less than 400Mj to compete, maybe 350Mj, or even less if we don't get the full range (about 600 miles in a gas hybrid), maybe 175Mj.
Since an (single use) aluminum battery can be up to about 4.75Mj:Kg, (gasoline * 20% = 9.33Mj:Kg), the aluminum is probably twice as heavy for gasoline's energy. But if we can accept half the range, it might be OK, if this tech lets it recharge efficiently.
Better battery tech is very exciting. Energy storage is probably the worst link in all the alternative energy systems we're now looking at. Even if it's not good for cars, if the material costs less than lead-acid batteries (like under $36:Kj), it's a major advantage for home/building power. Even if just storing power during non-peak times for local discharge during peak times.
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make install -not war