Spinach Could Be Used For Hydrogen Fuel

An anonymous reader writes "If Popeye had made alternative fuels, he'd have probably come up with something like this. Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a system that converts solar energy directly into hydrogen using the common spinach plant."

Comments

Re:Hydrogen != Green

[Black Gold Alchemist]

Please try zinc instead. Zinc-air technology is amazing. It is the most efficient round trip fuel technology I've seen. If we moved all (or even some) hydrogen research dollars to zinc air, it would win. See for example, this bus: zinc air fuel cell bus.

Re:Hydrogen != Green

[pr0f3550r]

Lightning from thunderstorms produces ozone in the troposphere. Ozone in the troposphere is a pollutant and causes respiratory ailments in animal life. Moreover, it is too volatile to ever hope to make it 'back home' to the stratosphere. Lightning does not build the ozone layer but rather radiation from space. The problem with H2 is that it does NOT combine with O2 unless burned which it cannot do unless it is in concentrations of >4%. It is, however, reactive with ozone and water in the upper atmosphere is a bad thing.

Part of the reason for the hole in the ozone layer above the poles in the winter and spring is due to the fact that it is, at times, too cold for ozone to form as a stable layer. So a reduction in the temperature of the stratosphere due to water in the upper atmosphere can cause an additional decay. H2 recombining with O3 produces water which lowers the temperature of the upper atmosphere causing further depletion of the ozone. Additionally, oxygen is heavier than nitrogen so the process of 'balancing' the system only serves to deplete the stratosphere of oxygen in all forms.

Nobody, to my knowledge, has even studied the affects of ground sourced H2 and existing monatomic oxygen in the mesosphere. Lastly, leaking and unspent H2 which doesn't react with ozone doesn't 'build up' in the stratosphere but rather it goes into space leaving the 'balance' you mention unanswered and having the effect of stranding the oxygen on the planet. Remember that Oxygen is a pollutant too and at 35% (we are currently at 21%) we get massive fires from a highly combustable atmosphere and huge spiders and frogs.

I accept that Hydrogen power is a better alternative for the time being to that burning fossil fuels at an unsustainable rate. But it is so popular to say that hydrogen is green and the answer to all our problems when there is this caveat and very little has been done to properly research the downside.

PS. I think it would take a long time for us to turn that much water to Oxygen through leaking H2 into space and thereby making massive frogs. Although it might be fun to see!