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Storing Hydrogen At Room Temperature
cylonlover writes "Hydrogen storage, along with hydrogen production and the lack of infrastructure, remains a major stumbling block in efforts to usher in hydrogen as a replacement for hydrocarbon-based fuels in cars, trucks and even homes. But with the multiple advantages hydrogen offers, developing hydrogen storage solutions has been the focus of a great deal of research. Now an MIT-led research team has demonstrated a method that could allow hydrogen to be stored inexpensively at room temperature."
He stores methane at body temperature.
And that's why I bought a Saturn.
1. Start with a VW (not the new kind)
2. Obtain permission slip from parent for kegger bottle
3. Drill Holes
4. Show off your hack job to news 10
I just mix it in, 1 part to 2, and all my room-temperature storage problems solve themselves!
Before people write off hydrogen as old hat in the face of the proliferation of EV's, keep in mind planes, ships, and the ground shipping fleet require far too much energy per trip to use batteries. For these vessels, It's going to be a race of energy efficiency and cost between hydrogen and bacteria that can utilize airborne or liquefied CO2 to produce hydrocarbon fuels.
That's an easy one, it's called water.
"Platinum-doped activated-carbon lattice" is not the material that comes to mind when I think of "inexpensively".
Seriously, the whole idea of "hydrogen economy" is simply stupid. It's not going to do anyone any good unless you have a power source to produce the hydrogen; and if you have said power source, it really isn't that hard to crack carbon dioxide and water to produce hydrocarbons rather than just water to produce hydrogen. Either produces carbon-neutral fuel, but hydrocarbons are far safer to store and use and hold more energy per mass or volume unit. Hydrocarbons also have the advantage of being compatible with existing vehicles and distribution network, being another name for oil.
The final nail in the coffin of hydrogen is that biofuels are hydrocarbons. That's understandable, since biofuel projects are simply trying to mimic, hasten and optimize the same processes that formed oil in the first place. However, that means that a hydrogen-burning vehicle can't use biofuels, at least not without losing massive amounts of efficiency.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Easy. Just build a huge dirigible to keep it in.
Might want to stay away from New Jersey with it, however.
Storing Hydrogen in Carbon brings back memories of this: http://slashdot.org/~GMontag/journal/22583 :D
Sow-Hsin Chen, MIT professor emeritus in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and senior author of a paper describing the new method, says it should make it possible to increase the storage capacity of the activated carbon material by fine-tuning the size and concentrations of the particles of platinum and carbon. The team also hopes to identify a catalyst that isn't quite as expensive as platinum.
So who the hell approved a story that says "Now an MIT-led research team has demonstrated a method that could allow hydrogen to be stored inexpensively at room temperature." If you follow the link it says that a way to inexpensively store hydrogen at room temperature is exactly what they haven't found.
I have a large quantity of hydrogen at room temperature on my desk right now.
--Oops, I just drank the rest of my water.
The internal pressure is ~4 atm and hydrogen is released when the pressure decreases.
I'm sure Chen asked himself whatcanpossiblygowrong, but did he find a way to mitigate it?
Yes yes I know hydrogen atoms will slip through the pores in the latex. And also react violently if set on fire. And stuff. But you could celebrate your "invention" with colorful hydrogen storage devices!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The best way of storing hydrogen at room temperature is to combine it with carbon.
Well said.
Sodium Borohydride + catalyst. They had working stuff in 2003. low pressure, safe storage and transport, reasonably good energy density. Or course it all comes back to the fact we have no cheap way to generate hydrogen. http://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/hydrogen_workshop/Wu.pdf
The same editor that lied about a French nuclear leak?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
In this experimental set-up, there is a nearly 1:1 ratio of Pt atoms to dissociated H atoms. Plus lots of carbon matrix. Overall, low hydrogen storage density, combined with *extremely* high cost.
Still interesting from a physical chemistry standpoint, but certainly not anything even remotely suitable for practical deployment.
Then I would surely like to retract the statement I made back then. Because once can be a mistake, twice starts to look suspicious. There are limits to far one can grant people the benefit of the doubt. This limit has now been reached. (And will certainly be broken if/when this happens again.)
United Nuclear has a working hydride solution (except the government freaked out and blocked them):
switch to hydrogen
Simple, low pressure tanks that use heat/cold to release/store the hydrogen....
I thought the major stumbling block is that it's not an energy source?
Not if it's used only in small quantities. We are talking about nanoscale here. Like the gold in chips doesn't make them expensive.
http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2003/06/59220
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h010v9w83l8j3441/
There is an old solution to the storage and dispensing problem. Combine it with Carbon and turn the Hydrogen into a liquid at room temperature.
A fuel cell will run cooler than an internal combustion gasoline engine, since the cell is more efficient (75% vs 20%). So your objection is only a red herring.
You are jumping to conclusions, aren't you? The expense of Chen's method depends on how much platinum he uses. Without knowing the quantity, you can't conclude that his method is costly.
The company Amminex have invented a technology that can store ammonia (for NOx emission filters, which is their primary business now). They claim this also enables solid hydrogen storage. Indeed, this was their primary research goal. The emission filter business apparently just happened to pick up on one of their side products.
I store hydrogen at room temperature all the time. Especially after i eat some chili. FARTGAS!!!!
They already found out 2 years ago that readily available chicken feathers, when carbonized, make perfect carbon nanotubes to store hydrogen. I wonder if using platinum doping with that will have more benefits than costs associated to it. See http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2009/06/25/carbonized-chicken-feathers-hydrogen-storage/ for details on the feathers.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I store hydrogen at room temperature all the time. My method is stable, simple and has no possibilities of explosion. The only trick is to get it away from the oxygen molecules when you need to use it.
/// Not a super-genius . . . yet. ///
Carbon fiber, Bisphenol A & B, and a catalyst wet the carbon fiber with the resin, and wrap it around a cylinder I've made thousands of Hydrogen storage tanks at my job, they operate in the 10,000 psi range, I could tell you what they burst at, but it may be a trade secret let's just say it's high enough that you won't have to worry, your valves and o-rings will fail before the tank itself production is not an issue, we can ramp up to do thousands of these easily enough, the process for building these has been streamlined and made ready for mass production, our only issue is we need someone to utilize them....instead of wasting their time with this fuel cell jibjab
BIG badaboom!
They are trying to find something that Hydrogen dissolves into for better storage density at low pressure than pure hydrogen? The same way acetylene is stored dissolved in acetone? (Acetylene will auto-react at relatively low pressures, so it can't just be shoved into a bottle the way propane can.) Rather than a solid, can someone refresh my memory on what liquids Hydrogen can dissolve in?
Also, the points about just combining the hydrogen with carbon are valid - for use with current production/storage/usage methods, i.e. the whole fucking system we currently use.
Finally, I will take this opportunity to point out again that when talking about alternative fuels, it is much easier/cheaper/more efficient to produce diesel substitutes than to produce gasoline substitutes. Ethanol fuel from corn is a scam, (bio)diesel is the future.
...and make it economically? The scientists are conjecturing, based on observations from an inelastic neutron scattering experiment on activated carbon coated with a platinum catalyst, that a low pressure H2 storage system could be developed, but seem to acknowledge that it would be expensive. If they'd actually constructed a storage device, I might be less cynical, but this seems to be another case of the theoretically possible being interesting but not economically feasible. From the article:
The team also hopes to identify a catalyst that isn't quite as expensive as platinum.
For what it is worth, a similar low pressure system using rhodium to bind hydrogen was conjectured half a dozen years ago, but I can't find evidence that a working prototype ever emerged. Using a platinum catalyst is an expensive way to bind hydrogen. I remember enough chemistry to know that the platinum group of elements (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum) all have similar hydrogen binding abilities, but all seem to be fairly expensive to produce in commercial quantities.
It's called the welding industry: millions of metal cylinders moving about the place...they're being sold, used and refilled all the time. Call your local Airgas company; have them send hydrogen cylinders over. Tell'em Randy (the manager at the Evansville store sent you.)
This is NOT the issue keeping back fuel cells.
SO WHAT IS?
I hear hydrogen bound to oxygen can be stored at all temperatures up to 100C. It's more economical to distribute the energy than the hydrogen. It is even more economical to distribute the process of generation and the raw materials.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I produce my hydrogen and store it in fire extinguisher tanks.
http://youtu.be/m9Q6gDKP2R0