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Chicken Feathers May Hold Key To Hydrogen Storage
pitterpatter writes "A researcher trying to find a use for them claims that after being heated enough to carbonize, chicken feathers hold as much hydrogen as carbon nanotubes do. So chicken feather charcoal might solve the storage problem for the new hydrogen economy. One problem down, half a zillion to go."
Chicken McNuggets.
Oh! Wait, I wonder if bat droppings would work?
Hmmm...Carbonized chickens and hydrogen. There has to be a joke in there somewhere about chickens being classified as munitions...
My blog
We can finally power our homes with chicken.
*pulls up to full service Hydrogen fueling station*
"Just put three Leghorns in the tank."
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
How much more energy does it take to turn a chicken feather into a "hydrogen storage unit" than can be stored in the feather anyway?
If you believe birds evolved "downward" from dinos, and as they used to say oil came from dinos, then we have come full circle.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
That's nothing. You want power? You want REAL power?
Harness the awesome power of chicken bone. Ask any programmer.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Jenny-mae, I tole you not to let Billy-Bob alone with the chickens and the lighter fluid!
But Mary-Sue, Billy-Bob's up and solved the Hydrogen Nanostorage Problem! He saved the world! Solved global warming! Ther gonna give him a NOBEL!
So? I'm still makin myself scarce when Pa starts askin what happened to those Chickens!
This is clucking good news!
Hydrogen will burn just fine in a conventional internal combustion engine. The modifications to a modern gasoline-powered engine to make it run on hydrogen are essentially the same as those to make it run off compressed natural gas. I’m sure many of you have noticed fleet vehicles with a CNG sticker on them; though not widespread, the conversion isn’t exactly uncommon, either.
There are three main problems with converting to hydrogen. First, though hydrogen has much more energy density per unit of mass than gasoline, it has much less energy density per unit of volume in any of the ways it’s currently practically available. Second, for similar reasons, getting a sufficient density of fuel / air mixture to the pistons is a bit of a challenge and generally requires turbocharging, pressurized fuel lines, etc. (Or, you can live with an underpowered vehicle.) The last problem, of course, is producing hydrogen.
If the claims of TFA are accurate, then we may actually be on the verge of solving all three problems.
If we’ll soon see affordable high-capacity tanks, that solves the first problem. The second can be dealt with by making use of many of the high-performance tricks we’re already familiar with.
The last...well, hydrogen can trivially be made by running a current through water. If you’ve got a photovoltaic array on your roof, you can analyze water and get essentially free hydrogen. While we’ll never see cars powered in “real time” by the sun, it’s quite easy make in a couple days as much hydrogen as you’ll need to power your car for a week of normal driving.
Put all these pieces together, and in a few years or so real solar-powered cars may be as common as home-converted home-brewed biodiesel cars are today.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
According to an interview with a researcher or the lead researcher or something like that, it's not as much as carbon nanotubes or other existing solutions, but it's "enough" and it's vastly cheaper. All existing solutions are impossibly expensive, that's the big deal here. Something like 6 billion pounds of chicken feathers are produced as by products of the chicken industry every year with zero practical reuses.
The same interviewee goes on to explain that there are a number of other possible uses of chicken feathers as a high grade material component, in everything from car body pieces to wind mill blades for wind power. I think it's an excellent effort and I hope it bears fruit.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
Plain and simple. Find a solution that utilizes veggies instead.
Health Freedom is almost as popular as Freedom itself.
Since the chicken feathers have only to be carbonized once, and can repeatedly act as hydrogen storage... your question is pointless.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXfHyDCcTGQ
poooooooooot !
If only swine flu hadn't taken over from bird flu we'd have an abundant supply of the feathers as well.
Because I maintain good intentions, and I assume most people do likewise, I'll also assume that the reporter made an error, and that Oregon researchers aren't actually trying to convert sunlight into hydrogen. Energy into matter? I seem to remember something about this ...
Nope, it's gone. Now, where did I put my glasses?
---jstlook ---For that is the way of Elves, for they say both yes AND no, and mean every word of it. --- J.R.R.T.
Theres obvious savings in the program to start with - how much hydrogen can a carbonised researcher hold?
A chicken for every potentiometer
rewriting history since 2109
When we've got Atomic Rooster!!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrVmBRqEp3s
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
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The idea those sound funny, and i've been laughing at a lot of the comments here, but chicken feathers are just waste and nearly free, so what could be cheaper to use for a hydrogen tank?
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Fuel Cell Feed | Electric Vehicle Feed @ Feed Distiller
Why do I have a feeling there is now going to be some "Why did the chicken cross the road" jokes to start because of this?
People need to read the moderation guidelines before clicking, the parent may be off-topic, but it isn't a troll.
Situation Normal; All Fowled Up.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
I wouldn't say 'about a zillion to go.' I would say one big problem to go. That problem is platinum. We simply have not been able to eliminate the need for platinum in fuel cells to extract the electricity from the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen. Platinum is a huge factor in the cost of the fuel cell and the larger problem is that we simply don't have the amount of it necessary to convert all of the vehicles of the world. I spent a few weeks at Los Alamos with a research group that had been given a hefty grant for finding a solution and all they were doing was shrugging their shoulders at it. It seems nearly hopeless.
The day we find a solution to this problem is, I believe, the day that fuel cells become viable for everyday transportation. I'll be the first in line to swap my motorcycle for a fuel cell powered version because the only problem with fuel cells is their cost per kilowatt. Currently it costs roughly $73 per kilowatt for a fuel cell (source). This is down from $1,000 in 2002. This means that we've come incredibly far, and we only have one problem to overcome.
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| DO NOT |
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Is that a Troll, Offtopic, Informative, or Funny?
if 30% of the people who read it think the FP is a troll, then its a troll
so don't feed it plz.
O.o
Chicken feathers! They keep the bird comfy, hold hydrogen, and may replace silicon in microchips!
Like anyone, I want to see society continue as long as possible, but I have no illusions: the Hydrogen Economy is bullshit.
Why? An abbreviation: EROEI.
The sooner we forget about hydrogen and get down to actual solutions, the better.
As I said - I'm good with industrialism, but I am NOT down with stupidity. The so-called hydrogen economy is a lie. It is not a solution except to the true believers. We need to make other arrangements, and money spent on hydrogen is money down a rat hole.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Adam and Jamie tackled this one on Mythbusters.
Using the same protocols as the 'official' testing, they found that thawed chickens busted windscreens as effectively as thawed chickens.(episode 9, IIRC...it's on youtube.com)
The same principles apply when using a steel cutting tool that cuts the steel with a stream of water. Yes, they use water, not ice to cut the steel.
Physics: learn it, use it, benefit from it. (hint: application of kinetic energy would be a starting point to understanding this)
[citation needed]
Water Jet Cutter:
A water jet cutter is a tool capable of slicing into metal or other materials using a jet of water at high velocity and pressure,[...]Water jet cuts are not typically limited by the thickness of the material, and are capable of cutting materials over eighteen inches (45 cm) thick.
NASA Chicken Gun:
There is a longstanding urban legend about the gun being loaned to some other agency, who fired frozen chickens instead of thawed chickens.[1]
Urban Legend:
Note:(from the NASA Chicken Gun wiki link above)
The 1970s test of the British High Speed Train windscreens used the Farnborough chicken gun and expertise, not NASA based expertise, busting the Mythbusters myth relating to NASA telling the British "defrost the chickens first".
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
And you should be modded troll for that trollish sig.
Where is all this hypothetical hydrogen going to come from?
Thirsty?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
its not a troll, its just the truth.
can you not handle the truth
O.o
paper, fodder .... the list doesn't end
There's an informative lecture on this technology here.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Billy Mays here for hydrogen chicken feathers! Nanotubes are for rubes, we have the awesome power of dinosaur evolution built in!
the best Hydrogen storage is the Hydrocarbon.
What most people don't seem to understand is that the environmental problem with burning hydrocarbons (gasoline, diesel, etc.) *is not* with the act itself. My point being that the principle of the Internal Combustion Engine isn't the problem.
The problem is where the hydrocarbons come from. Right now, the feedstock for hydrocarbon based fuel production is petroleum. That petroleum is happy underground and would stay that way virtually indefinitely *if* we didn't pump it to the surface.
That brings us to the problem: When we burn hydrocarbon fuels based on petroleum, we are adding carbon to the atmosphere that was locked underground. However, *if* we burn hydrocarbon based fuels that are synthetically created using (among other things) recaptured Carbon from the air, then we are *not* adding to the CO2 load of the planet and therefore can focus on more immediate environmental problems.
It's going to happen sooner or later. However much petroleum there is in the ground (20 years or 200), it is for sure and certain that *one* day it will run out. We're eventually going to have no choice but to switch to a hydrogen economy and I've seen *nothing* on the drawing board (even far flung into the future) that matches the energy potential of hydrocarbons.
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
of what you're talking about. ;-)
I dont play world of warcraft and I get laid reguarly. That post is also a troll.
The last...well, hydrogen can trivially be made by running a current through water.
Basic electrolysis is pretty lossy up-front. It makes batteries look *good*. (41% efficient for systems running at 100 celsius. 64% for 850 celsuis. Not sure that's suitable for consumer equipment!)
If you've got a photovoltaic array on your roof, you can analyze water and get essentially free hydrogen.
It's electrolyze, not analyze. Also, widely manufactured photovoltaics are still expensive.
While we'll never see cars powered in "real time" by the sun, it's quite easy make in a couple days as much hydrogen as you'll need to power your car for a week of normal driving.
I think the photovoltaics you'd need to recharge a car in a couple of days are going to be expensive. Let's say your family drives one half hour a day. This is pretty reasonable. A 15 minute commute during the weekdays and some chores on the weekend. To get yourself a reasonable stack of Thundersky Lithium Ion Phosphate batteries, you'd need to buy something like 30 of them, which is the size of the stack for Kearon's electric Ford Capri. This gets the stack up to 96 volts and can supposedly push the Capri 90 km or about 55 miles. It's also 8640 watt-hours. But remember, your elecrolysis is only 41% efficient, which means you have to produce 21073 watt-hours. There's going to be about 5 hours of peak sunlight per day, so let's just say the two days recharging is equivalent to 15 peak hours. This works out to about 1400 watts of solar panels. That's about $10,000 of new solar panels for one 55 mile charge completed in two days. We need about 210 miles range for the 30 minutes of driving a day. For that, you'd need something like $35,000 of solar panels.
So our back of the envelope calcs, with an optimistically small car and very modest driving distances with an unreasonable assumption of EV like efficiency, still gives us a pretty hurtful dollar figure. And this is just the solar panels. The electrolyzer is going to cost money as well. However, if you take the solar cells out of the equation, this starts to look good for us. Why? Because much of the cost of an electric vehicle is in the batteries. If we can electrolyze and burn our own hydrogen from a tank that actually fits in a car, we can still come out ahead, assuming the storage systems don't wear out.
http://www.evcapri.com/
How about if they ban First Posts from AC users...
Until someone logged in has posted something - no AC's
And if logged in users post "First post" nonsense - ban them.
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
Would probably only create a competition for "Second post".
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
Their surface areas per unit mass ( 3,000 m^2/g) and are also quite cheap. See, for example from my home state: http://www.physorg.com/news162195986.html
you know what? i think people who post about eating obamas fecal mater as a first post need to die.
saying "First Post" isn't bad.
and as someone else said, it would only make people compete for second post or maybe third post.
O.o
Their surface areas per unit mass (smaller than 1,000 m^2/g) are not too impressive (since storage is done by physisorption on the surface). This will not produce sufficient adsorption. Activated carbon from corn-cobs appear to offer more promise (migger than 3,000 m^2/g) and are also quite cheap. See, for example from my home state: http://www.physorg.com/news162195986.html
Must be something in the world that smells worse that burnt chicken feathers
"He experimented for years with various ways to use feathers and eventually wondered if they might store hydrogen."
Now did the professor just wake one one day and say "Aha! I know how to solve the energy crisis! Chicken feathers!"? It seems to be very original thinking.
I do play World of Warcraft and I get laid regularly. It plays havoc with my raid schedule, let me tell you. :P
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
You are a horrible person.
haha now if only chickens could fly ... we'd finally have our flying cars!
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cus.gus@hotmail.com
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
One good reason to have cars powered by chicken feathers is that chicken feathers are one of only two substances that may lawfully be littered upon the public streets and highways. Cal. Vehicle Code 23114(a). So once their fuel value is depleted, just dump 'em on the road.
Horse Feathers!
"The modifications to a modern gasoline-powered engine to make it run on hydrogen are essentially the same as those to make it run off compressed natural gas."
Um, no, not at all.
Hydrogen can be used in a single a cylinder engine, but because it has an extremely fast a flame front, considerably more so than natural gas (CNG), then any engine with a common intake runner (like all modern multiple cylinder engines) will cause preignition in all the cylinders, rendering the engine useless for doing any sort of useful work.
I order to burn gaseous hydrogen in multiple cylinder engines, one needs to use completely separate intake runners to each cylinder, and other expensive (and illegal) modifications.
You're not as educated on this issue as you seem to believe.
clear water
*duh*
Why is this so surprising? My understanding was that carbonized Chicken Feathers, like many charcoals obtained from natural biologic materials, contains significant amounts of carbon nanotubes, buckyballs, and all sorts of unrelated glop. The nanotubes cannot be separated from the glop, so researchers write off the whole thing as a failure. Now to find the reference. That is going to be a pain. I heard this a long time ago.
All is paradox. Retired lawyer, so this is just one more layman's opinion.
Hmm...I don't play WOW, and I don't get laid regularly. Where does that leave me?
.there is enough of everything for everyone.
The true hydogen economy will take off literally when pig wings are carbonized at 711 degrees Fahrenheit. So, we only have to wait until pigs fly.
Married?
Hmmm...so they've figured out that storing hydrogen with carbon is actually a great idea.
Funny, the earth has being doing that for billions of years. Man, it sure takes us awhile to catch on.
We get to piss off the vegans, environmentalists, and anti-environmentalists, all at the same time!
This is fucking BRILLIANT!
Gee, that's great. I suppose we're going to need a shit ton more chickens, to be bred to have their feathers burnt.
I wonder, did they also evaluate human hearts? Who knows, could work ten times better than chicken feathers!
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
There is now, and has only ever been one problem with the hydrogen economy.
The cost and durability of fuel cells.
When was the last time you heard someone say that we need to solve some issues before we can use natural gas? Hydrogen is not much less energy dense, nor is it much more difficult to work with. Storing the hydrogen is a non-issue, we've been storing gasses under pressure for quite a while now.
If the the cost of fuel cells comes down another 10 fold, and we can supply all the need for PEMs, we will have a hydrogen power infrastructure. Until then, hydrogen is nothing special.
The article didn't mention how to get the hydrogen OUT of the feathers. Maybe you just burn the feathers.
see a sap is like the thawed chicken, it has give, it knocks the guy out,
a hammer (frozen) has less give, breaks the guys skull
Can't you just multitask? :P
This will solve nothing and simply drive up the cost of pillows.
There are already windmill ships that produce hydrogen. What if high velocity winds of stormy areas and even hurricanes could be tapped to produce massive amounts of hydrogen under partial pressure at depth? This would be ferried to power plants on the shore by piloted or robotic tanker subs that need never surface, connecting to pipelines offshore. Not your traditional windmill...I'm thinking vanes the size of Airbus wings (...or larger, tip to tip, but uniformly wide.) riding on railroad capacity carriages top and bottom like a massive venetian blind wrapped around two towers cruising the leading or trailing edge with a category five blowing through it and producing power like a portable Hoover Dam on steroids...while operating with at least a fifty percent safety margin. I forget the numbers, supported at both ends and not tapered the vanes could handle more than the maximum takeoff weight of the new Airbus and probably half again or more. A hundred and fifty-five mph wind is really not so very much over stall speed. (We must allow for increased air density due to the high moisture content.) I don't have the numbers handy, and I never calculated the electrical output or hydrogen production, figure fifty to maybe a hundred vanes per harvester generating on front and back sides with a little trim for maneuvering. Might be interesting. Some places are so stormy you could just about park one and run a hose... Oh yes, the cars! Yeah, roasted feathers, sure. And a star rotor pure hybrid with those new capacitors. Just put acceleration power strips on the on ramps and at intersections so I can get up to speed on the grid. "Home, James."
Chicken carbonara
I would suggest this could be a profit center for KFC, but everyone knows that they use featherless, beakless, tube-fed mutant chicken-like organisms for their supply.
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
OK, serious question here.
Let's say I can take a hammer and swing it and flatten a piece of wire.
How can I calculate what the equivalent force would be required to do the same deformation by, say, squeezing the wire in a vise?
In other words, how can I relate impulse into a constant force?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
>Force = delta momentum/delta time
That answered the question right there.
All I gotta do now is go figure out how to calculate the momentum of the hammer of X mass swung with speed Y.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum
Looks like momentum = mass * velocity
The trick is going to be figuring out the instantaneous velocity of my hammer at the time of impact. I should be able to approximate it with a stopwatch and a helper. The delta momentum will be the momentum - zero, since the hammer is coming to a complete stop.
Any thoughts on how to figure out the instantaneous velocity of the hammer at the time it strikes an object?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Wanking.
see sub.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
> I don't play WOW, and I don't get laid regularly. Where does that leave me?
Put this man in cell #1, and give him a drink.