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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."
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.
"Platinum-doped activated-carbon lattice" is not the material that comes to mind when I think of "inexpensively".
Except for it being exothermic.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
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.
exactly, it's stored already in lots of places. It's both the storage and releasing of the hydrogen which is needed. I'll now go back to TFA and see if they address or it's another waste of a few million.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
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.
details details, we will make up for it in volume.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Easy. Just build a huge dirigible to keep it in.
Might want to stay away from New Jersey with it, however.
You should stay away from New Jersey in general.
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?
They talk about the releasing of hydrogen from the storage mechanism. But, there's one catch and that is that it currently requires platinum and it isn't cheap. So all they have to do is find another material which works besides platinum. that's all.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Except that water is a lot heavier that hydrogen gas is. You're carrying around an additional ~16 grams per Mole and water itself is really difficult to compress.
Unless the technology for electrolysis comes a long way in a very short period of time, water isn't likely to be a viable source of hydrogen for a fuel cell. Ethanol OTOH, has somewhat less extra mass per Mole of hydrogen, but has other downsides such as volatility and flammability.
The same editor that lied about a French nuclear leak?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
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.)
Didn't the legendary cold fusion experiment utilize platinum?
Palladium
No sig for the moment.
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.
He was not precise. He meant to say he buys it *pre-mixed* with oxygen at a 2:1 ratio.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Well no wonder no one could repeat the experiment; it took them the whole first night just to make their characters and character growth was so slow no one bothered past three sessions!
http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2003/06/59220
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h010v9w83l8j3441/
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.
Trisolian Guard: "You just drank our emperor. What is your name?"
Anonymous Coward: "Anonymous Coward."
Trisolian Guard: "All hail emperor ... uh ... Anonymous Coward."
"For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice" -- God
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?
A fuel cell will create less heat as a by-product, but that doesn't mean the parts of the engine are running at a cooler temperature (e.g., you could have a very hot, but very well insulated engine that releases very little heat).
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.
But will the EPA let you get away with storing large quantities of Dihydrogen Monoxide?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
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.
Well, you have to assume non-stupid engineering. If there are local hot spots in a fuel cell, we have any number of ways to move out the excess heat. At the very minimum, we can do what was done in your gasoline car: we can put a honking big radiator next to the engine.
Such ugly measures probably won't be necessary, simply because there is a lot less overall heat to worry about. So yes, a fuel cell should run much cooler, per watt of output power, than an engine that uses gasoline explosions.
The *external* part of the fuel cell should run much cooler, but the internal part may need to be quite hot, in order to work at high efficiency.
If the overall fuel cell is cool, then the local hot spot is either quite small or not very hot. Either case is easy to handle. As I said, you have to assume non-stupid engineering.
It utilized bollocks, which is relatively easy to come by, especially when you're the kind of scientist who skips straight to the press conference ;)
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.