New Catalyst Allows Cheaper Hydrogen Production

First time accepted submitter CanadianRealist writes "Electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen is very inefficient without the use of a catalyst. Unfortunately catalysts are currently made of crystals containing rare, expensive toxic metals such as ruthenium and iridium. Two chemists from the University of Calgary have invented a process to make a catalyst using relatively non-toxic metal compounds such as iron oxide, for 1/1000 the cost of currently used catalysts. It is suggested this would make it more feasible to use electrolysis of water to create hydrogen as a method of storing energy from variable green power sources such as wind and solar."

Comments

Nonsense.

[mosb1000]

There may be some benefit to lowering the cost of electrolysis, but the real problem is still the cost of fuel cells, or the inefficiency of producing power from the hydrogen through conventional means.

Re:Nonsense.

[theshowmecanuck]

If you lower the cost of the fuel enough, the cost of the engine becomes moot.

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheap fuel means you can spend a little more on the system, sure, but there are limits.

In stationary power plants this is true, but cars have to move. A moving power plant has to worry about its power-to-weight ratio, and its power-to-volume ratio. Would you really want to drive a minivan that seats two people just to have a cheap fuel cell?

Re:Nonsense.

[sjames]

Transportation and storage are huge problems as well. Tiny leaks that don't really matter for methane or propane would be a big problem for hydrogen. Meanwhile, hydrogen makes metals brittle.

Re:Nonsense.

[slick7]

Transportation and storage are huge problems as well. Tiny leaks that don't really matter for methane or propane would be a big problem for hydrogen. Meanwhile, hydrogen makes metals brittle.

Like everything the fuels industry touches, it will make water more expensive than it already is.

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheap fuel means you can spend a little more on the system, sure, but there are limits.

In stationary power plants this is true, but cars have to move. A moving power plant has to worry about its power-to-weight ratio, and its power-to-volume ratio. Would you really want to drive a minivan that seats two people just to have a cheap fuel cell?

So use it for stationary power plants. Wind and such tend to produce energy when it's not needed; this would be an excellent way to mitigate that.

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Would you really want to drive a minivan that seats two people just to have a cheap fuel cell?"

I drive such a minivan, it's called a bike.

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you lower the cost of the fuel enough, the cost of the engine becomes moot.

OK, I will sell you my car for a billion bucks, and give you all the fuel you need to drive it for free.

Re:Nonsense.

[gatkinso]

>> Would you really want to drive a minivan that seats two people just to have a cheap fuel cell?

Yes.

Re:Nonsense.

[mcgrew]

It looks like I'm a bit more ignorant than I thought. Hello, wikipedia?

Electrolysis

Currently, the majority of hydrogen (â¼95%) is produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming or partial oxidation of methane and coal gasification with only a small quantity by other routes such as biomass gasification or electrolysis of water.[14] There are three main types of cells, solid oxide electrolysis cells (SOEC's), polymer electrolyte membrane cells (PEM) and alkaline electrolysis cells (AEC's). SOEC's operate at high temperatures, typically around 800ÂC. At these high temperatures a significant amount of the energy required can be provided as thermal energy (heat). This energy can be provided from a number of different sources, including waste industrial heat, nuclear power stations or concentrated solar thermal plants. This has the potential to reduce the overall cost of the hydrogen produced by reducing the amount of electrical energy required for electrolysis.[14][15][16][17] PEM electrolysis cells typically operate below 100ÂC and are becoming increasingly available commercially.[14] These cells have the advantage of being comparatively simple and can be designed to accept widely varying voltage inputs which makes them ideal for use with renewable sources of energy such as solar PV.[18] AEC's optimally operate at high concentrations electrolyte (KOH or potassium carbonate) and at high temperatures, often near 200 ÂC.

Nope, I'm still ignorant. I thought all it took was a DC current and saltwater, with oxygen bubbling from one lead and hydrogen from the other?

Can one of you guys enlighten me? I hate being ignorant.

Re:Nonsense.

[mcgrew]

Like everything the fuels industry touches, it will make water more expensive than it already is.

Water expensive? Maybe in a desert, but everywhere else, distilled water falls from the sky. Most of the Earth's surface is good old dihydrogen monoxide. How is the fuels industry making water expensive?

Re:Nonsense.

[Forty Two Tenfold]

COST =/= PRICE

Re:Nonsense.

[RicktheBrick]

Here is a link http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uoc-dod032113.php. It mentions a beer refrigerator size unit. I would imagine that would be smaller than a normal refrigerator. I live near a water pumped storage unit. They are investing close to a billion dollars in changing the turbine blades. They also built 56 windmills here at a cost of around 250 million dollars. It would seem to me that the money spent for the blades would be better spent on the home units since they would be much closer to where the electricity is being used. I would think that they could make bigger units for industry. I would hope that the units would be free and it would be like an air conditioner unit so it would be external to the house.

Re:Nonsense.

[khallow]

If you lower the cost of the fuel enough, the cost of the engine becomes moot.

No, high fixed costs can trump low variable costs easily. Keep in mind opportunity costs. You could have put that money into something else, like an investment, rather than an expensive engine. So a cheap engine with moderate fuel costs can beat a very expensive engine with no fuel costs.

Re:Nonsense.

[khallow]

COST =/= PRICE

That billion bucks is a cost not a price. Get it now?

Re:Nonsense.

[rtfa-troll]

Nope, I'm still ignorant. I thought all it took was a DC current and saltwater, with oxygen bubbling from one lead and hydrogen from the other?

Can one of you guys enlighten me? I hate being ignorant.

You are more or less right. That does work. However, the question is not just whether you can do it, but also how fast it happens and how much energy is lost in the process. Catalysts, like the one in the article, reduce energy barriers / increase the probability of a reaction and so make the whole thing more efficient. That can take things from "theoretically interesting" to "profitable industry".

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, obviously we need a better way to store the hydrogen. Perhaps reacting it with oxygen, which produces a dense liquid which can be transported through pipes.

And the reaction is quite exothermic, and could be used to produce electricity.

Re:Nonsense.

[M. Baranczak]

It mentions a beer refrigerator size unit. I would imagine that would be smaller than a normal refrigerator.

Depends on how much beer you have.

Re:Nonsense.

[budgenator]

I'm not sure it will lower the cost much, the articles seemed misleading, the catalysts are 1000X cheaper, not the resulting processing + costs. If the catalyst is 1000X cheaper, but poison quickly you might barely make break-even. Efficiency of the amortized costs is more important.

Re:Nonsense.

[kwbauer]

Yeah, I could park my SUV in the beer refrigerator at the convenience store down the street.

Re:Nonsense.

[kwbauer]

Sometimes. But if you had accepted the deal then his asking price would have been exactly equal to your cost.

Re:Nonsense.

[TubeSteak]

Nope, I'm still ignorant. I thought all it took was a DC current and saltwater, with oxygen bubbling from one lead and hydrogen from the other?

That is all it takes and makes for a great science lab demonstration.
Unfortunately, the process it not terribly efficient in its usage of electricity.
Using a catalyst allows you to get the same or more [output] from your reaction.

Where the catalyst is used depends on whatever works.
Sometimes it's the anode or cathode, sometimes it's in your electrolyte solution, and sometimes it's an electrolyte plate.

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you implying that the use of water for energy storage will increase the price of water? If we took the entire energy usage of the US, industrial, commercial and residential, we get about a 1 GJ per person per day. Assume every person had to store this energy in their home, and that electrolysis + fuel cell cycle was only 25% efficient, and the water output was lost to the atmosphere. This works out to about 50 gallons per person, which is about how much water the typical person in the US uses per day (not counting commercial and industrial uses). Considering we wouldn't need to store 100% of the power being produced, and that there are other users of power and water than just in people's houses, the impact on water demand would be pretty minimal.

Re:Nonsense.

[theshowmecanuck]

Hyperbole is one of the cheapest commodities of all.

Re:Nonsense.

[khallow]

But if you had accepted the deal then his asking price would have been exactly equal to your cost.

Cost and price are inherently subjective. By changing the point of view, from him to me, you change the meaning. There are also transaction costs which need to be added in.

Re:Nonsense.

[theshowmecanuck]

You are not factoring in time and are assuming the money is disposable. Over a longer period of time the fuel costs will add up to more than the expensive engine. Assume we need the engine now and your investment won't pay off for years. You don't get the return till way after you have gained the return and benefit of the more expensive engine. And most people don't factor in today's real cost in the investment... i.e. the return dollars in the future are cheaper than today's dollars.

Never mind factors like, will the moderate priced engine have higher operation and consequential costs? For example carbon based power plants have tons/tonnes of environmental impact that are never factored in that make the actual cost in the long run far higher. Something that seems more expensive up front might not have that hidden cost in the end.

In the real world, your argument is too simplistic.

Re:Nonsense.

[theshowmecanuck]

For sure, this would be one of the biggest hurdles I think. Most people assume a gas is a gas is a gas. The average person needs to understand that it is like the difference between a fishnet bag holding bowling balls versus a fishnet bag holding baseballs. You need smaller holes to keep baseballs in. And current economical storage will need even tighter tolerances for hydrogen. I wonder about ceramic or carbon fibre lining and/or valves to solve the brittle part. Or one for the valves and another for a lining.

Re:Nonsense.

[Jane Q. Public]

"A moving power plant has to worry about its power-to-weight ratio, and its power-to-volume ratio. "

Actually, studies have shown that the make-or-break factor for hydrogen isn't the vehicle, it's long-term storage and transport of the gas.

The other issues (storage tanks for vehicles, power-to-weight ratios, etc.) have all been sufficiently solved. Allow hydrogen to be economically produced at local plants, and you have a viable fuel.

Re:Nonsense.

[theshowmecanuck]

How about pipes that could carry electricity? :p

Re:Nonsense.

[theshowmecanuck]

My thought was that maybe the existing catalysts poison very quickly so the added cost is in constantly replacing them. Also in the scarcity of them. If you can make many, many cheap commercial scale electrolyzers for the same price as one using rare earth metals (which may poison at the same rate) this might account for the price savings. Would like to see some of these figures too.

Re:Nonsense.

[khallow]

You are not factoring in time and are assuming the money is disposable.

No way. You aren't factoring in time. I already explained how I factor in (and you should as well) time via the "opportunity cost" investment. There's also the closely related concept of time value of money, where it is better to have money now than later, all else being equal.

And of course, money is fungible. That's one of the prime features of money. We don't need the hugely expensive engine now and we can find an investment that pays off in the near future rather than some distant future.

Never mind factors like, will the moderate priced engine have higher operation and consequential costs?

Why of course you can come up with a straw man edge case. It doesn't affect my argument at all.

For example carbon based power plants have tons/tonnes of environmental impact that are never factored in that make the actual cost in the long run far higher.

Let's keep in mind that most of that "carbon based" impact is purely imaginary. Seriously.

In the real world, your argument is too simplistic.

Give a real argument for a real world and then you'll have room to talk. But when your rebuttal boils down to "I'll only consider extraordinary edge cases that trivially confirm my original simple-minded (and wrong) argument", you don't have any grounds to whine about my argument being too "simplistic".

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like everything the fuels industry touches, it will make water more expensive than it already is.

Water expensive? Maybe in a desert, but everywhere else, distilled water falls from the sky. Most of the Earth's surface is good old dihydrogen monoxide. How is the fuels industry making water expensive?

It's the same as using fields to grow fuel since 1 billion people do not have access to clean water; just because I'm a westerner it still doesn't make sense for me to flush my poop with drinkable water. If they they can make a closed system that reuses the same water over and over again - a stillsuit engine of sorts - that'd make a lot of sense.

Re:Nonsense.

[dhartshorn]

Just burn it on site.

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

The "hydrogen car" already exists - and don't need fancy stuff like fuel cells. Any plain old gasoline engine will burn hydrogen just fine. The hydrogen car is no harder to make than a natural-gas powered car. A hobbyist can do the conversion.

The reason only enthusiasts try - is that hydrogen cost more than gasoline. Fix that, and the hydrogen car will be here already - converting the existing fleet of cars is easy enough. Hydrogen may need a fancy fuel tank for good range and accidednt protection - but that will become available if hydrogen becomes the preferred fuel. The rest is easy - no changes to the engine or transmission.

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you drink it? Can you get hydrogen from it if you can't?

And if we switch to splitting H from all the O -- what happens to all that O and what would its effects be on the rapidly decreasing population of green things which we need to do something about CO2?

Re:Nonsense.

[davester666]

Yes, we can use the coal we don't use in stationary powerplants in our cars!

Re:Nonsense.

[sjames]

It might actually make a lot more sense to process the hydrogen along with a carbon source into a more readily usable fuel. We know quite a lot about transporting methane and propane.

Re:Nonsense.

[dakohli]

"Would you really want to drive a minivan that seats two people just to have a cheap fuel cell?"

I drive such a minivan, it's called a bike.

Why bother with a fuel cell? use an Internal Combustion Engine

powered by hydrogen?

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

To get the same driving range from an ICE that burns hydrogen as one that burns diesel/petrol/natural gas would require a high pressure fuel system that is weight and cost prohibitive. Solid state hydrogen is even less feasible.

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the issue with fuel cells is that they don't last long as the membrane poisons easy and aren't cheap enough to be regularly swapped out like engine oil. You could pump hydrogen into a piston engine(like the op said) and run it, but the efficiency isn't the same as a fuel cell. The emission is still just water. The vision is simply we would move to hydrogen fuel once making it is cheaper than gasoline and then work out the fuel cells. Of course we are decades away from either.

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

" Most of the Earth's surface is good old dihydrogen monoxide."

Go to your nearest ocean supply of water and try drinking it.

Water is expensive. You either have a fresh water supply or you have an expensive job to do to make one. In several substantially oil-producing countries, clean water has become vastly more expensive:

http://povertynewsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/high-price-of-water-in-nigeria.html

Countries that have (for understandable reasons of economic survival) prioritised pumping oil out of the ground instead of pumping water have made water expensive by not focussing on it.

And that's before we get onto the petrochemical pollution of ground water, or the immense demand for water in the oil-refining process stretching the reserves of those countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_injection_(oil_production)

http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/energy/2013/01/130130-water-demand-for-energy-to-double-by-2035/

(check out the linked quiz)

GP is entirely correct; oil production increases the price of fresh water.

Re:Nonsense.

[Chrontius]

Even the most efficient internal combustion engine is only about 25% efficient, until you start getting into combined-heat-and-power units. Which fuel cells can do just as well, if not better. Remember, their exhaust stream is molecularly purified water in the form of steam, generally - just pipe it into the bottom of your water heater, to distribute the heat, and cut your utility bill in three ways - cheap power, none of which is spent heating water, which is free with the purchase of energy.

Re:Nonsense.

[dakohli]

I hear you.

I see it as an evolutionary process, the hydrogen powered ICE (Internal Combustable Engine) while not that efficient, may well prove to be better than a gasoline powered unit. If we can keep costs down, and then when the next generation of technology is ready to do it cheaply, then slide it in. You will always have early adopters ready to spend big money right away in order to be more green, or perhaps burn less gas. But like the chevy volt, who can affort to pay the full cost of new technology?

If we are using excess energy to produce Hydrogen gas, why not burn it initially in an ICE even if it is not the most efficient use possible? Compared to what we have now, it's found power. We can start using it right away, and then get extra capacity later on by increasing efficiency, either by better production techniques or more efficient engine systems, or both. If we start producing Hydrogen with our spare power, I think there would be room to try several things to see what we can come up with.

Re:Nonsense.

[ChrisMaple]

Even the most efficient internal combustion engine is only about 25% efficient,

Toyota claims 38% on the current Prius engine.

Re:Nonsense.

[ChrisMaple]

Cost and price are not subjective, they are the demonstrable items exchanged. Value or worth in a particular context may be subjective.

Re:Nonsense.

[ChrisMaple]

Excess heat from nuclear power plans is sometimes used to make fresh water from seawater.

Re:Nonsense.

[ChrisMaple]

H. Miller was describing himself and few others. A thoroughly despicable human being.

Re:Nonsense.

[Darinbob]

Would you really want to drive a minivan that seats two people just to have a cheap fuel cell?

Confused here. What's the problem? Why would anyone care?

Re:Nonsense.

[kwbauer]

In certain contexts, they are not. I understand that "cost" (from the producer perspective) is the actual monetary amount required to provide a good or service while "price" is the monetary value being requested of the purchaser.

Purchasers may also use those definitions when determining whether the asking price is "fair" (definitely a very subjective term).

However, from the accounting perspective of the purchaser, cost and price are the same thing: the amount of money spent on acquiring the good or service.

Re:Nonsense.

[compro01]

"Fancy tank" is understating the issue. Hydrogen stored at 5000psi and used for an ICE will get you about 1/5th the range of the same volume of gasoline.

Re:Nonsense.

[Chrontius]

Is that including gains from the regenerative braking, and reusing that kinetic energy?

If not, well, Science marches on and I'll update the data I quote. And, by the way, cooool.

Re:Nonsense.

[khallow]

In certain contexts, they are not.

[...]

from the producer perspective

[...]

from the accounting perspective of the purchaser

The contexts are subjective.

Re:Nonsense.

[khallow]

Cost and price are not subjective, they are the demonstrable items exchanged.

Not at all. As the other replier noted, it depends whether you are seller or buyer as to whether something is a price or a cost. Especially if no transaction actually occurs because the potential buyer chooses not to buy at the offered price!

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you have hydrogen, combining it with carbon to make denser liquid or gaseous fuels isn't that hard. So synthesize hydrogen using the new catalyst and seawater using solar or nuclear energy, then make synthetic gasoline and diesel using atmospheric CO2 or waste biomass. Vehicles and infrastructure all stay the same, and net carbon goes to 0.

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that there's more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline than in a gallon of liquid H2. Is that true?

Re:Nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

So why use an ICE ? why not use a more efficient Turbine ? Yes the bucket, bladed varieties are not produced in enough quantities to make them cheap, but there are other options like a much simpler Tesla Turbine. Turbines don't generally have torque, but if you only run them to power a generator to charge batteries or capacitors to drive inverters and electric wheel motors who needs torque ?
As for Transporting the gas and other Uses, Malmo already add as much as 40% Hydrogen to their Natural Gas pipeline mix - with no modifications required by end users. Hydrogen also has other properties like it doesn't backburn, which potentially make it safer than other hydrocarbon fuel sources. Storage problems can be largely solved using metal hydrides or carbon fibre pressure tanks.
I tend to think the best solution will be a hybrid solution - perhaps even with photovoltaics plastered over your vehicle to convert all that sunlight that normally just makes your car stuff and hot in the car park during the day while you are at work.
Even better, lets take advantage of the lighter fuel, get rid of the wheels (and the friction) and move to ground effect vehicles like the hoverwing.

Re:Nonsense.

[theshowmecanuck]

Whatever dude. If you think those are edge cases, I wouldn't let you plan anything. You learn a few economics terms and now you are an expert. Sure. I should have used smaller ideas for you.

It might be helpful.

[Mr. Chow]

You never know. If the catalysts are relatively cheap, instead of trucking or piping hydrogen to stations to fill up people's cars, you could generate the hydrogen from water and electricity on site. That might be safer because you may not have to store a large amount of hydrogen and the infrastructure is already there (the water and electricity I mean). Of course, that does not solve the storage problem in cars nor the fact that water and electricity aren't free, nor the relatively low efficiency of using hydrogen as a fuel...

Re:It might be helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better, if you can generate hydrogen with a large efficiency, it might be more efficient to transport the gas, instead of electricity.

People seem to think that electricity is efficient. In practice, very large amounts are lost during transport, and not only during production.

At a certain point, it may be more efficient to transport a fuel, and not only for 'mobile' use. We already do so with natural gas, there is no reason not to do so with hydrogen. Maybe not on a household scale, but to local small-scale electricity stations that produce 220 or 110V 100 meter away from your house. What you loose in efficiency generating it, you win back in efficiency savings transporting it.

Re:It might be helpful.

[drinkypoo]

People seem to think that electricity is efficient. In practice, very large amounts are lost during transport, and not only during production.

Less than 5% of the power in the US is lost in transmission. This is significant, but hydrogen has many special problems which will probably make your idea a non-starter for the foreseeable future.

Re:It might be helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mea culpa, you are right.. While a lot of power is lost in daily use, the grid itself seems to be remarkable efficient with only 5-8% losses typical - so the real losses are at home with the various appliances, not in the distant transports within a country - then it only plays a role at very large distances, which they dodge using DC current.

Re:It might be helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, massively high voltages help.

Re:It might be helpful.

[mpe]

At a certain point, it may be more efficient to transport a fuel, and not only for 'mobile' use. We already do so with natural gas, there is no reason not to do so with hydrogen.

Hydrogen is a much smaller molecule than methane which means that it's harder to make pipes and tanks which don't leak. In addition it reacts with a lot of things methane dosn't react with. So there is less choice of materials to make those pipes and tanks out of.

Re:It might be helpful.

[Khalid]

Or you can generate liquid fuels (methanol, ethanol, gasoline, diesel) using Fischer and Tropsch style reactions which has been making a lot of progress lately. It's a better way to transport hydrogene.

Re:It might be helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorNed

That's 'only' 580 km of cable, providing the european continent with cheap and green hydro power from Norway. Despite the inefficient conversion and huge investment in this convertor, the DC current is more efficient on that distance. High voltage AC is simply not suited for such range.

In contrast are gas- and oil pipelines that happily, and relative cheap and safe, manage to traverse entire continents.

Re:It might be helpful.

[Internetuser1248]

Less than 5% of the power in the US is lost in transmission. This is significant, but hydrogen has many special problems which will probably make your idea a non-starter for the foreseeable future.

Problems such as the fact that hydrogen electrolysis loses way more than 5% of the energy. It was around 50% last time I checked and most of the new research that gets mentioned on slashdot completely fails to mention efficiency at all leading me to believe they have not improved it.

Re:It might be helpful.

[rossdee]

"That's 'only' 580 km of cable, providing the european continent with cheap and green hydro power from Norway."

I thought Europe was bigger than that. At least it was when I last looked at a map.Even if you put this cable straight across the Baltic, its not going to reach all the way to Italy or Greece.

Re:It might be helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

never worked around hydrogen, have you. Mean and nasty stuff. How about this. Dream the next size larger. Go for the double cheese on the burger, ok? H2 personal motiation pack. You have the pack hooked to your engine, engine to a generator, and a 10 start capicator ,for shopping trips. You have just eliminated gasoline for the future. You generate h2 out of the mooisture oof the air. Eliminates the warming of the earth. Until it gets to freexing, when the plants die and the hydraulic cycle stops.

Re:It might be helpful.

[bn-7bc]

You are right about that, IMHO the qoute was badly formulated, i this reffers to NorNed which connects the south of Norway to the north of The Netharlands thus giving Norway the possibility to directly import/export electricity from/to central Europe.

Re:It might be helpful.

[suutar]

yeah, when I got to this point I was wondering if splitting water more easily would improve water+CO2 -> hydrocarbon efficiency. (guessing probably some but maybe not much)

Re:It might be helpful.

[budgenator]

If your harvesting wind-turbine power during non-demand times, what's better 1.25 MW @ 15% = 180 KW or 0MW @ 75% = 0KW ? Maybe the money earned isn't enough to offset the added wear and tear on the turbine or maybe it's what it takes to push wind-farms into the realm of economic feasibility; some brave souls will have to find out.

Re:It might be helpful.

[drinkypoo]

It's been tried, but they only used it to run on-site generators. And that's the rub; using the hydrogen on-site is not a winning proposition because it's expensive and inefficient, and transporting the hydrogen is a non-starter. We have significant trouble maintaining electrical lines and they are ever so much simpler than a gas pipeline. The pipelines we use to transport oil fail all the time, and they are far simpler than a hydrogen pipeline would be. We have the technology to build pipelines that "never" leak, but we don't use it except in cases where lots of people would die right away (P.R. nightmare) like chip fabs.

Re:It might be helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

expensive, inefficient, and an explosion risk.

*Colourless and odourless
*Extremely reactive with oxygen and other oxidizers
*Low ignition energy
*High flame temperature
*Invisible flame in daylight conditions
*Negative Joule-Thomson coefficient; leaking gas warms and may spontaneously ignite
*Small molecular size promotes leaks and diffusion
*Very wide flammability limits in air mixtures
*Can diffuse into or react with certain metals, embrittling them
*The cryogenic liquid at 20K is even colder than frozen nitrogen, oxygen or argon

There are better synthetic fuels and energy storage ideas.

hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[slack_justyb]

Hydrogen is a very poor storage for energy. It takes a lot of energy to get a small amount of hydrogen and takes a lot of hydrogen just to store a small amount of energy. We are better off with the current system of pumping water up a hill than with anything hydrogen can give us. You need a more energy dense fuel to compete, and using the least dense thing in the universe is the dumbest idea. Pair that with the fact that hydrogen is an atomic whore and binds strongly to everything. Making it that more difficult to get it all by itself.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the exact opposite is true, the specific energy density of hydrogen is higher than gasoline.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Another person saying why something can't be done. I guess you either didn't read the articles or didn't understand the implications.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Per kilogram it is more dense energy dense but not by volume. You still have to carry somewhere around 6 times the volume of hydrogen to equal the same volume amount of gasoline. Look at wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, hydrogen has a higher energy per unit volume than even the best batteries, and is more than 50 times lighter for the same amount of energy.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[dmbasso]

I don't wanna be mean, but you have a glass roof... Chemistry is not the right level of abstraction, if you are going to talk about nuclear interactions...
And if you wanna consider the potential nuclear energy of matter, you yourself are a huge walking fuel depot, the only problem is fusing your atoms...

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Water pumped up a hill is very inconvenient for mobile energy-consumption needs.

Energy density and even efficiency are not the only considerations in a fuel, or we'd all be driving cars with nuclear reactors in them.

Sometimes "worse" is actually fine, good, great, and/or better.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey look somebody who failed basic high school physics.
You realize a hydrogen bomb does not contain hydrogen right?

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[slack_justyb]

Oh I'm going to have a fun night with you.

The story said jack crap about Hydrogen storage for fusion, in addition, we don't have a method at the moment for using Hydrogen fusion as an energy source.

I like your bit about nuclear weaponry (sic), the reason we use it as oppose to, I dunno, Lithium, just something out of the air here, is because it is simpler and therefore easier to build a detonation device out of. Not because we feel that we're going to get more bang per buck with Hydrogen. When it comes to leveling cities, cheap and effective is favored more over costly and unsure.

Another thing, even if we used Hydrogen for energy in the fusion way of things, it's still pretty shitty compared to say Helium or Boron, wild guess as to why Einstein,

Finally, basic high school chemistry would have taught you JACK SHIT about fusion since that's not fucking chemistry!!! Please feel free to educate yourself about the difference between nuclear physics and fucking chemistry. You have an awesome rest of your life.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[slack_justyb]

You obviously don't get how hard it is to get one kg of the stuff. Sure whatever. At this point it's obvious that no one has ever actually tried hydrogen fuel.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[AK Marc]

In the future, hopefully we'll have nuclear reactors in every car. A small fusion generator powering every car. If we can shrink it small enough and keep it energy positive, it'll be everywhere.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

A hydrogen bomb contains deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen. Tritium, another isotope of hydrogen, is obtained from fissioning lithium, stored in the form of lithium deuteride.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Khyber]

Umm, you do know many thermonuclear weapons are called 'Hydrogen Bombs' because they fuse hydrogen caused by means of uranium/plutonium fission, right?

Look who failed what, here.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Khyber]

" we don't have a method at the moment for using Hydrogen fusion as an energy source."

Yes we do, just for destructive purposes, not transportation or electrical generation (well, besides the resultant EMP.) It's called a thermonuclear weapon. You know, the hydrogen bomb?

"the reason we use it as oppose to, I dunno, Lithium, just something out of the air here, is because it is simpler and therefore easier to build a detonation device out of."

Umm, lithium is used, ever hear of lithium deuteride as part of the secondary in a nulcear weapon to allow for during-detonation tritium production? The main reason it's not used as the primary fusion material is because it's a bit more of a bitch to make it go critical and fuse, and is better served in on-site tritium production, where hydrogen is much easier to compress and fuse, and thus make it release practically all of its energy.

"Another thing, even if we used Hydrogen for energy in the fusion way of things, it's still pretty shitty compared to say Helium or Boron, wild guess as to why Einstein,"

Umm, boron requires temps of a few billion Kelvin to fuse. Hydrogen fuses roughly around 100 million Kelvin. Try again. You'd need a nuclear detonation currently to even get the thing cranking and going. Maybe when the new plasma pulse tech comes around, but that'll likely take another fifty years because nature doesn't play fair. Also, it wouldn't be helium, it'd be helium-3, which has totally different properties than its source isotope.

"Finally, basic high school chemistry would have taught you JACK SHIT about fusion since that's not fucking chemistry!!!"

It still teaches you enough to know your comment about hydrogen and low energy density being total bullshit.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[AxeTheMax]

The only way you have not completely lost the thread of the original story is unless you are suggesting that this new process provides an easy way to create deuterium (and it looks as though you need to read up on what deuterium is). And as far as I know there is no shortage of deuterium to cause difficulty in either nucleary weaponry or nuclear energy.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[JakartaDean]

In the future, hopefully we'll have nuclear reactors in every car. A small fusion generator powering every car. If we can shrink it small enough and keep it energy positive, it'll be everywhere.

Sure, sounds good to me. If we're thinking big, make mine the flying car I've been waiting for ;-)

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[AK Marc]

http://moller.com/dev/

We've been 5 years away from the flying car for the last 30 years.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Immerman]

Unless I misremember fusion isn't actually used for energy in hydrogen bombs so much as for an extra flood of fast neutrons to since the fission reaction is otherwise too slow to consume more than a tiny percentage of the material before it gets blown apart.

As for p-B11 fusion - I believe the Polywell folks were scheduled to demonstrate it last year as one of their progress milestones, and the Navy reported satisfactory progress. Take that as you will, the details will likely remain secret for another decade.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

flying cars are called 'aircraft'.

most people have enough trouble travelling in 2 dimensions without introducing a third one.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Immerman]

Maybe one day, if we can manage some sort of low-energy fusion. Most fusion research I've seen though seems to have efficiency scale with size, with breakeven power production being virtually impossible in a volume smaller than several meters without some sort of near-perfect high-temperature superconductors. Moreover most fusion reactions release far more neutron radiation per watt than a fission reaction, requiring thick shielding, and aneutronic fusion reactions all require drastically higher energies = larger reactor.

I'm holding out more hope for supercapacitors or carbon-fiber flywheels for personal transportation, lets keep the nuclear reactors someplace less volatile. Have we learned nothing from the radioactive explosive traffic jams in Fallout?

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[AK Marc]

VTOL aircraft design for mass use are considered a special class, especially if they road legal. Flying cars aren't "just" aircraft if they are road legal.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[AK Marc]

If you have a very dirty nuclear bomb, the fallout will settle radioactive dust inside cars that have broken windows. Explosions would spread that radioactive dust. That, and didn't we learn that we can get 1.21 gigawatts from banana peels from Mr. Fusion in a safe flying car/time machine?

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently weaponeer insiders never used the term "hydrogen bomb' as it is incorrect in virtually every context.

Most modern weapons do not employ fusion at all, save for a bit of boosting in the primary. While info on the subject is scant, it would seem that most modern weapons use a pure fission radiation imploded secondary which as it turns out was Ulam's initial idea all along. Perhaps the secondary is boosted as well, who knows (well, someone does but they aren't talking). While this places a fairly undefined (in unclassified literature at least) upper limit on yield between 1 - 3 megatons and they usually only are a fraction of that, the resulting weapons are small, light, rugged, easier to maintain, and have a longer shelf life.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[gatkinso]

Fusion is not in the realm of chemistry.

All fusion is not the same. Stellar fusion employs different nuclear reactions than what a weapon employs. A fusion reactor is different yet again, but more closely resembling stellar fusion.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless I misremember fusion isn't actually used for energy in hydrogen bombs so much as for an extra flood of fast neutrons to since the fission reaction is otherwise too slow to consume more than a tiny percentage of the material before it gets blown apart.

You mis-remember. Modern fusion bombs are incredibly "clean" I.e. the majority of their energy comes from fusion rather than fission primary.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Dr_Barnowl]

the details will likely remain secret for another decade.

If they have something viable, I really hope not.

The Navy could do more for world peace than they ever could with ships and subs if they have their hands on a fusion reactor that works (read : is practical).

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[gatkinso]

The term "hydrogen bomb" has always been a misnomer. Also most modern weapons dispense with the fusion altogether - the secondary is simply another fission core imploded by the primary radiation rather than by conventional explosives. Fusion it seems has gone out of style and with today's accuracy is no longer needed aside from boosting which is rather trivial.

Weapons that do use fusion mainly employ fusion as a neutron generator to cause fission in a fissile tamper thus dramatically increasing yield (fission 1%-fusion 15%-fission 84% portion of yield respectively). The weapons that use fusion for primary weapon effect are either banned and out of production (so called neutron bombs which is basically just a bomb as mentioned above without the fissile tamper) or are three stage weapons so huge as to be impractical these days like the Tsar Bomba. Some bombs produce tritium by bombarding lithium deutride with neutrons from a fission "spark plug" in the secondary which is in turn fused producing neutrons for the above cycle... but this can hardly be called a "hydrogen bomb". "Lithium bomb" would be better.

Of course this is all open source regurgitation.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

>> we don't have a method at the moment for using Hydrogen fusion as an energy source."
> Yes we do, just for destructive purposes

An uncontrolled reaction isn't a different way of saying "usable for an energy source" and you know that. This is why you attempted to redefine "energy source" to suit your weird thought process. If you can't efficiently harness it, where does the "use" come in, in the context of fuel cells, which the entire thread is about? "Of course I can make a car that runs on water but it only goes downhill." - Not contributing to the discussion in a meaningful way and making you look dumb.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Khyber]

"The only way you have not completely lost the thread of the original story is unless you are suggesting that this new process provides an easy way to create deuterium"

It appears you cannot read and comprehend what is being talked about. Let me reiterate for you.

GP claims Hydrogen has shit energy density. I counter with "If it has shit energy density, why is it used in nuclear weapons as the secondary fusion detonation?"

You suddenly come in and your brain segues over to the other side of the conversation without thinking.

Also, Lithium deuteride is used as a fission casing of the secondary fusion bomb to generate tritium.

I know how my (USA) nukes work. It's France and other countries that don't employ hydrogen as a primary fusion fuel in their thermonuclear weaponry.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Khyber]

"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon"

Second sentence - " It is colloquially referred to as a hydrogen bomb or H-bomb because it employs hydrogen fusion"

Plenty of our nuclear weapons stockpile employs fission/fusion combo detonations that utilize hydrogen. This is the USA. Other countries don't employ the use of hydrogen, or only have a couple of weapons that utilize it (typically done in the gun-format when utilized.)

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Khyber]

"If you can't efficiently harness it, where does the "use" come in,"

Implying the direct purpose of harnessing energy to destroy things isn't efficient.

No wonder you posted as AC. You know about as much as the GP to this entire convo.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

GP claims Hydrogen has shit energy density. I counter with "If it has shit energy density, why is it used in nuclear weapons as the secondary fusion detonation?"
...

I know how my (USA) nukes work.

Evidently you don't, or you would know that energy density re combustion has nothing at all to do with thermonuclear reactions. Please explain how you think they're connected. Can't wait to hear this.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[slack_justyb]

There are no words, I honestly cannot reply to the level of ignorance of that last reply. Also I'm giving up Slashdot, it makes me sad to know people like you exist, so if I ignore it, perhaps people like you will cease to exist. Have fun!

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[suutar]

very true. But until we have nice fusion reactors that doesn't really help with how much energy you can get out of a kilogram of hydrogen for household use, and once we do have fusion reactors we can afford to be inefficient at electrolysis.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

"What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

I also am giving up on Slashdot. It used to be entertaining to participate in the verbal jousting, but now it's just overrun with idiots. Not to mention the "me too" redundant news "stories," narrow topics, mods on crack, stupid filters and time limitations on posting that make it impossible to actually have a discussion. So long, /., you're no fun anymore.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[TubeSteak]

I can't seem to find the article right now, but studies have been done that show combustion engines are happiest with ~80% gasoline and ~20% hydrogen.

Your exhaust is cleaner and your fuel efficiency improves.
There are systems right now for big rigs, trucks, and RVs.
The only catch is that you have to essentially reprogram your ECU to take full advantage of the hydrogen.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

GP claims Hydrogen has shit energy density. I counter with "If it has shit energy density, why is it used in nuclear weapons as the secondary fusion detonation?"

That really has essentially zero to relevance to the original context though, which is why people are getting annoyed. If someone talks about the energy density of a battery for use in cars or energy storage, they don't include the energy that you would get from burning the plastic casing... because it is not accessible in a relevant setup. The use in nuclear weapons is irrelevant for use as electrical energy storage.

Otherwise, without context, the energy densities you are think of are off by two orders of magnitude. Hydrogen is extremely energy dense if you have access to antiprotons...

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, boron requires temps of a few billion Kelvin to fuse

And suddenly practicality or usefulness in a particular context becomes relevant to this conversation when it seems like it wasn't before? The reaction is not relevant to electricity production or bomb construction, but it certainly is relevant to various nuclear physics experiments and even in satellite design, in part because of the energy density of the reaction. This thread looks more like, "Khyber wants to talk about nuclear weapons for a while," with original story relevance be damned, and any other tangents be damned.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Trains, trucks, busses all have plenty of room for storage.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

As a fusion researcher with still the ugly habit of browsing Slashdot on lunch breaks, I usually jump at the chance to discussion fusion related topics on Slashdot, even though it is frequently a tar pit. But in this case, it is so asinine and disconnected from the story and even the beginning of the thread... nope. Maybe I should be thankful that one guy is so repeatedly idiotic about things, I can disregard things and go do something more productive than arguing with him or pointing out incorrect statements.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Immerman]

> The Navy could do more for world peace than they ever could with ships and subs if they have their hands on a fusion reactor that works (read : is practical).

If I were being cynical then I'd say that's an excellent reason for them to keep it secret as long as possible - world peace would do horrible things to their budget.

In a more virtuous world I would still expect them to keep quiet at least until the researchers could convert their viable reactor into a viable powerplant. Generating fusion is after all only the first phase, you still have to develop a reactor than can survive a sustained reaction and harness it for power, not to mention a business plan to convert a viable power plant design into money, and I suspect the publishing embargo cuts both ways in the absence of a pressing national security concern. And there has in fact been a fair amount of what appears to be preparatory business activity by the major players in the research, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[theshowmecanuck]

There is a lot of open space between the wind turbine towers of many wind farms that isn't being put to use. How about putting hydrogen storage and fuel cell engines there? Then they can transmit electricity when the wind doesn't blow, or store power generated during non-peak times.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you want to do, put solar panels under a few air-burst nukes?

NOBODY here is talking about using nuclear energy solely for destructive purposes except you. You should be modded down into oblivion as "offtopic, troll, flamebait, fucking moron."

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[nitehawk214]

Per kilogram it is more dense energy dense but not by volume. You still have to carry somewhere around 6 times the volume of hydrogen to equal the same volume amount of gasoline. Look at wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

Well hydrogen is the least dense of all matter. Of course it isn't going to be as energy dense per volume.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Khyber]

Apparently you're too ignorant to even follow a conversation and use logic and critical thinking.

Plain and simple, idiot GP said "Hydrogen is shit energy-wise."

I proved him wrong, and you're jumping in like a total fucking idiot going on a segue in a totally different direction.

My words are still true and all you can do is bitch about nothing, which means I'm right and you don't have one fucking leg to stand on.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Khyber]

" This thread looks more like, "Khyber wants to talk about nuclear weapons for a while,""

then you need to work on your reading comprehension.

GP: "Hydrogen is shit for energy density"

Me: "Nope, you're wrong, otherwise it wouldn't be used in X."

You: wharrrrgarblnousefulinformationwharrgarbl

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

You only think you did, because you brought nuclear reactions into the mix when GP was talking about chemistry. As another poster pointed out, all elements have the same energy value per E=MC^2, so your assertion about that being the reason for using hydrogen in nuclear weapons is completely wrong. You still don't see why despite everyone with a clue pointing it out.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wise people so full of doubts.” - Bertrand Russell

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I had a morbid curiosity to see if this thread went anywhere and came back. Either you replied to the wrong comment or are making a lot of assumptions and putting words into my mouth. Kind of glad I didn't respond to anything else in the thread, even if more than half the problems weren't your posts.

Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Taking a hint from another poster, this is no different than a discussion of battery technologies going like:

Poster: Organic radical batteries have shitty energy density, they only store ~100 kJ/kg

You: You obviously failed fail at chemistry, because the heat of combustion of those compounds is about 10 MJ/kg.

Plus, if you were trying to make some actual point, you would reply to other people making solid points... but you just want to make stupid arguments that go nowhere, or have little relevance, or even zero relevance now.

Rocket Fuel?

[sanman2]

Good for rocket fuel, perhaps? Although there's still the cost of storage

Re:Rocket Fuel?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose it could lead to a more 'low-tech' way of producing fuel on the Moon, asteroids, or the like.

Re:Rocket Fuel?

[nospam007]

"I suppose it could lead to a more 'low-tech' way of producing fuel on the Moon, asteroids, or the like."

It's Mars you're thinking of, it has so much of that stuff that you can see the red glow from earth with the naked eye.

Re:Rocket Fuel?

[Anonymous Coward]

In a way you are correct. There are Ions in abundance in neat space. by the gravity wells, you just have to be able to mine them. A storage solution, magnetic boottle, does not have too be high pressure, Motor-ion engines, jet thrusters, yoou just have to pump out the "whatever" t create a thrust. ionized or ice cubed. Look back at what the german rocket engineers proposed in the 1930, the same era as goddard here. You would be supprised with what we are relearning.

Re:Rocket Fuel?

[FishTankX]

Generally most hydrogen is produced from breaking down natural gas. So this won't really impact rocket fuel until it can get hydrogen produced by electrolysis below that of natural gas. With the glut from fracking, I don't see this happening, as alot of our energy now is generated from natural gas. Generating energy from natural gas to use it to split water is likely not as efficient as stripping off the hydrogen directly.

Re:Rocket Fuel?

[tombeard]

Convert it to methanol.

Cheap hydrogen?

[SpaghettiPattern]

Cheap hydrogen? This lad here only settles for premium. Not only are the atoms more shiny but all my my friends use it and I really want to be part of the in crowd.

Re:Cheap hydrogen?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're going to put it right next to your vinyl records, vacuum tubes, and monster cables, right?

Hype as usual

[JaWiB]

Basically the same catalysts have been reported previously. In this new paper, they don't bother to highlight the fact that their films are extremely thick, so of course they get great catalytic activity (though it's an oxide, so the series resistance might just be a problem...)

Re:Hype as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

(though it's an oxide, so the series resistance might just be a problem...)

Catalysts are not anodes or cathodes. They're passively involved in the reaction at either (and both, because of molarity), and it also depends on what they're using as an electrolyte. They're probably using aqueous NaOH (sodium hydroxide) or MgSO4 (aka. epsom salt), which are practical under most circumstances. The electrolyte and the distance between the anode and cathode can have a bigger influence on amperage than the composition and size of the electrodes. Carbon electrodes have lower conductivity than any metal, but are still capable of passing enormous currents in electrochemical cells in the right circumstances (molten salt aluminum refining). Plus, the textbook definition of a catalyst suggests it's not used up in a chemical reaction, but that's not entirely true. Many catalysts wear out over time. The article's amorphous iron catalyst might break down or lose efficiency after several hours of use, especially if the electrolyte is replenished with water that contains impurities.

I'm just a hobbyist, though. My understanding of it might be a bit wrong.

Re:Hype as usual

[theshowmecanuck]

I don't know if you missed it in this case they take this catalyst and deposit it on a light sensitive substrate lattice. When it has finished depositing they shine a light on it which dissolves the substrate leaving a porous amorphous catalyst structure. They think the added surface area helps it be a better cheaper catalyst... more surface to interact react with. Sometimes it isn't the new material on its own but also how you apply it. I couldn't read the article you linked to because it is behind a pay wall.

catalyze

[Anonymous Coward]

dogalyze
birdalyze
horsealyze
totoisealyze
yackalyze
star-bellied-sneechalyze
nematodealyze
amoebalyze
anteateralyze
giraffealyze

Re:catalyze

[RandomUsername99]

Yeah... I remember the first time I slashdotted on weed.

Re:catalyze

[dmbasso]

I see you got some THC catalyzer...

Re:catalyze

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw, there are no chemists in this discussion... ruthenutillating.

nuclear weaponry != chemistry

[Anonymous Coward]

While we are at it, E=mc^2, all matter has the same energy density. Stop making useless comparisons. If you have a fusion reactor in your phone, my anti-matter+ air battery will beat it. What we care about is usefulness. Hydrogen fuel cells have good energy density for the mass yes, but for the volume the suck.

Re:nuclear weaponry != chemistry

[rossdee]

All the energy we use (apart from Fission reactors and geothermal) comes from a fusion reactor, its just that the reactor is 1 AU away. Most of the energy we use has been stored in the form of carbon (coal) or hydrocarbons (oil and gas) over millions of years. But we can't continue using that source since there is already too much CO2 in the atmosphere..

We can utilise some of tthe energy from that fusion reactor directly (solar) or indirectly (wind) but its not a constant reliable supply. Extracting hydrogrn from water is a way of storing that energy so we can use it when the wind is not blowing and the sun is blocked by clouds or at night, and also as a war of fueling transportation which currently uses carbon based fuels.Hydrogen atill has a better energy density per weight than batteries.

Re:nuclear weaponry != chemistry

[ChrisMaple]

"But we can't continue using that source [Sure we can. We've doing it today, and we'll do it tomorrow and next year...] since there is already too much CO2 [as determined by whom? By what standard?] in the atmosphere."

I'll believe it when I see it in production

[EvilSS]

Until then it's just so much hot...um...hydrogen gas.

Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[AaronW]

I think hydrogen fuel cells are a dead-end technology. Batteries are steadily improving and by the time they're able to solve the fuel cell issues there won't be demand. By then batteries or possibly graphene supercapacitors will have taken over, with much higher efficiency. Lithium batteries are very efficient at storing energy and it's a lot simpler to just use a battery, an inverter and an electric motor than a hydrogen storage system, fuel cell, inverter and electric motor.

They're already able to give cars 150 miles worth of charge in 30 minutes and the batteries will last for many years before they need replacing.

Even with a catylist, cracking water to make hydrogen then storing it will be nowhere near as efficient. The energy density of hydrogen is also fairly low. I believe the future belongs to batteries and all-electric vehicles. I realized this after having acquired an EV of my own, a Tesla model S.

EVs are a different mindset. Each night when I come home I spend about 10 seconds plugging in. In the morning it takes 10 seconds to unplug and I basically have a full tank. Even the current wait at a supercharger is not necessarily time wasted unlike when filling a gasoline car. There is no reason for me to stand next to the car waiting for it to fill up. I can just as easily walk over to a restaraunt and have a nice meal for the price of filling up a tank, or I could surf the web, read E-mail, whatever.

Right now the biggest limitation is there are not enough of these rapid charging stations, but that will change as the infrastructure improves. The other biggest limitation is the cost, but the cost of batteries is steadily declining while the capacity is steadily increasing. The cost of electric motors like what Tesla uses should not be that high, especially since their induction motors do not contain any rare-earth minerals.

-Aaron

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the opposite: batteries are a dead end.
Batteries may be improving but the power needed for fast charging will not.

It works now because since there are only a few EV, and you don't need new infrastructures for a few cars at a time (wikipedia gives 40 to 50kW to charge a car in 20-30 minutes). But if EV become popular, then that will change...

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

"[Every number you mentioned]"
Citation needed.

Seriously, This isn't a cost issue. It's a feasibility issue. Just the thermodynamic of charging this big of a battery in such a short time... And the capacitors ! Can you imagine the charging stations ?! I'm not versed enough in the physics, but just the amperages and voltages in question are enough to raise an eyebrow...

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[O('_')O_Bush]

Batteries are also a dead end. I'm sure that is hard to hear since it is your pet technology and the one you have invested in, but there is little reason to change the entire automotive culture to fit EVs when there are green technologies closer aligned to the better performing fossil fuels.

I'm sure there will be EVs for a while, but the fuel of the future will very likely be algae based ethanol. It has close to the energy density of gasoline (much better than batteries for decades to come) and doesn't require long charging times. It is also close to carbon neutral (and I think, given the feed potential, could be considered carbon negative). And it is efficient enough to be practically grown.

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[khallow]

One can also react that hydrogen with other chemicals to create more conventional (and useful) chemicals such as methane, ethane (useful base compound for making gasoline), ethylene (common plastics building block), and ammonia (usual starting point for fertilizers).

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[russotto]

I think hydrogen fuel cells are a dead-end technology.

Probably. Hydrogen's a lousy fuel for a lot of purposes.

They're already able to give cars 150 miles worth of charge in 30 minutes and the batteries will last for many years before they need replacing.

Where many is "2". Long-lasting rechargeable batteries are like clean diesel, solar power or good fluorescent bulbs; there's always someone swearing that THIS iteration doesn't have the problems the previous iteration did. And they're always wrong.

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[AaronW]

Actually the power needed for fast charging is not as big of a problem as one might think. There have been some big advances in large batteries (i.e. liquid metal batteries) which can charge during non-peak load times. Also, with EVs most people will be charging at night at home. The grid can already handle this for millions of cars right now at night.

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[AaronW]

It's easy to get the numbers. My Tesla already handles 90KW for charging and the connector isn't all that large. The battery charges at 250A, 360V DC. This type of power is regularly handled without much difficulty, especially when you consider that the peak energy usage of my model S is 320KW. The battery, inverter and motor are water cooled with a radiator that is significantly smaller than is used for an internal combustion engine. Charging Li-Ion batteries is highly efficient, 85-90%+. Capacitors are also extremely efficient. Inverters are typically also highly efficient, usually at least 85% efficient. Cooling is no more difficult than cooling a typical internal combustion engine which is far less efficient. The thermodynamics is not that big of a problem.

The 90KW cable also isn't that big, certainly smaller than the hose that fills a conventional car. The inverter at the supercharging station is less than half the size of a normal refrigerator and is external to the car.

Most houses have anywhere from 100A to 200A service. The overhead wires are not *that* thick and running a higher voltage, i.e. 600V, is not all that difficult either. Hell, internally my Prius steps up the 200V from the battery to 500V to run the electric motor.

http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric has some information. The rest is easily available via Wikipedia or Google.

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[AaronW]

The Panasonic batteries used in my car will maintain 80% of their original capacity after 2000 full charge/discharge cycles. With my daily 15 mile (each way) commute I use about 11% of the battery capacity. 2000 / 0.11 = 18,181 days of usage, or about 49 years until I'm at 80% capacity. There is also some loss based on time, but I should be able to easily get over 10 years of use out of them. Now if I drove over 200 miles each day the batteries will last significantly less time, but the battery performance is steadily improving each year, both in capacity and longevity and the cost is continuously decreasing. The rapid charging does not have a significant impact on battery life either since they are water cooled.

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

Ethanol is a terrible fuel. Biodiesel is where it is at. That said there is room for an ecosystem of renewable technologies. All considering the pros and cons of the technology. Derp.

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe ethanol. Carbon fixing is hard, but maybe biological solutions could work.

I'm thinking ammonia. Nitrogen and hydrogen and heat and electricity are pretty easy to find. Pipelines already exist. Hard part will be convincing people to accept fuel that smells like ammonia instead of gasoline.

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[Billy the Mountain]

It's also going to be hard for people to accept the fact that ammonia spills are going to be lethal a significant percentage of the time.

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[spage]

Batteries are the way you get a decent boost to the efficiency of burning anything in an inefficient combusion engine, viz hybrid powertrains. Keep dreaming that ethanol from anything will become so cheap that you don't care about efficiency. Meanwhile plugging in is the cheapest, most efficient, and least-polluting way to make a car go the first XX miles right now.

I'm not against ethanol from biomass, though it's a far less efficient way to get energy from an area than covering it with solar panels, and the processes all require substantial energy inputs. If and when ethanol from anything is cost-effective it'll serve as a fine fuel for the range-extender engines of plug-in cars that mostly run off their batteries.

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[vandamme]

And if they figured out how to make cheap biobutanol, we could keep driving the cars we have now on it.

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[hicksw]

Now all we need is genetically engineered plants using something 10 times as efficient as chlorophyll that yields ethanol instead of sugar. And lives/grows/propagates while drunk.

Cancel the 'plant' part. I might volunteer for the transmogrifying virus.

All hail Dionysus. Who thought HE would solve our energy crisis?
--
What happened to Hope? Buried between her sisters, Faith and Charity.

Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end

[Anonymous Coward]

This is also why ethanol is used instead of cheaper methanol. Never ignore the toxicity of your fuel. The only use I know of for lethal fuels is rocketry and that's because they were designed for wartime use when people die or get horribly maimed anyway.

Re:No, it won't

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't argue with that logic.

Reading this half asleep

[davorh]

and thinking to myself ... how can be AMD latest drivers be connected to hydrogen production ... my brain is just to preconditioned :)

Great news!

[Loki_1929]

This is great news for all you Hindenburg reenactors out there!

The catalyst is not the problem

[blogagog]

If you had a perfect catalyst that allowed you to convert water to hydrogen and oxygen 100% efficiently (which of course we can never find), it would still not be cost effective. All you'd be doing is converting fossil fuels --> energy --> hydrogen. There is no good reason to do this. Hydrogen is significantly less easily transported than liquid fuels. It's even significantly less transportable than CH4 if you compare the energy/volume ratio. Making a grid of hydrogen suppliers would be painfully inefficient to the point of absurdity. H2 is not the energy of the future. I'm not knocking hydrogen. It works great in the sun. Just not as a non-fusion source of energy.

Re:The catalyst is not the problem

[foniksonik]

We'll find a good use for hydrogen one day. The idea of sunshine + sea water + rust = hydrogen + ??? = portable energy sounds so good though. We just need to solve for ???

Maybe it's not portable though, maybe it's just a temporary store that then takes more sunshine to convert back to electricity.

Not terribly efficient but if the hard components are cheap enough it's really just wasting a little sunshine. Not too bad as a trade off for base load from solar/wind power. It has its uses in any case.

Re:The catalyst is not the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, someone connected the right dots in this pattern.

Take a given number of kWh of electricity and use it to make H2 via electrolysis, then compress that H2 up to 5,000 psi, feed it into a car, and drive. You go X miles.

Take that same number of kWh and charge EV batteries, and you drive 3X miles.

As we continue to wake up to the urgency of climate change, we will be increasingly desperate to clean up not just transportation, but all parts of our economy, including electricity generation. This means we not only need to make our electricity sector far less carbon intensive, but we have to use as little electricity as possible. The last thing we need is HFCVs propping up demand for coal- and natural gas-generated electricity.

Re:The catalyst is not the problem

[rtfa-troll]

All you'd be doing is converting fossil fuels --> energy --> hydrogen.

Why would you do that? There are lots of other sources of energy than fossil fuels.

One big use is for Nuclear plants. Nuclear power is a very big strain on a national grid since it must produce at a more or less constant rate 24 hours /day 356 days a year. Power usage of course varies very much depending on time of day and weather conditions so if you use more than a little bit of nuclear on your grid you have to have a way to dump the excess energy Nuclear plants generate when it's not needed. Pump storage is one place you can dump energy, however once your reservoirs are full you have a problem. This has even lead to the cost of electrical energy becoming negative at some points of time in some places. Being able to generate hydrogen at those times could soak up a whole load of excess energy. If you are being paid by the nuclear power plant to do that then it's even better.

Wind power is now one of the cheapest available sources of energy (e.g. 96 USD/MWh compared to 99 to 140 for coal depending on your generating system) but it has inherently variable output depending on how the wind is blowing so if you want to achieve reliability levels equivalent to other power sources you have to overbuild heavily. Now, wind is very convenient for a grid since it is easy to ramp up and reduce output almost instantly but the fact is that that's somewhat wasteful.

Instead of slowing down your wind generator when demand reduces below output, why not dump a load of that power into generating hydrogen. Remember also that the marginal cost of just leaving a wind generator running is extremely low even compared to the existing low price. The main cost of wind generation is capital cost and the additional wear may is marginal or may actually be negative (if you can avoid speed up/slow down cycles). This means that if you can generate hydrogen fast enough in a small enough space with a low enough capital investment it would really make sense to build plants like that close to large wind farms.

Apart from supply side stabilization, there's also plenty of value in building such storage systems close to large cities where nearby pump storage is unlikely to be available. This essentially allows the pre-existing transmission grid investment to be used more efficiently, evenly and continually. The hydrogen creation runs when consumer usage is low and electricity prices are cheap. When usage is high the gas can be burned to create energy. Whilst you are losing energy in the conversion process, you are saving plenty by getting essentially free transport on unused power lines.

Fusion candidates

[Immerman]

Actually for energy from single-step fusion fusing deutrium into He4 is as good as it gets at about 6MeV per nucleon. Nuclear binding energy per nucleon (MeV, negative): from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Binding_energy_curve_-_common_isotopes.svg
H1* - 0
H2 - 1.1
He3 - 2.5
H3 - 2.9
He4* - 7.1
Li6 - 5.3
Li7* - 5.7
Be9* - 6.5
B11* - 6.9 ...
Fe56 - 8.8 (atom with minimum energy) ...
U235 - 7.6
(*dominant natural isotope)

He4 is already pretty close to the minimum energy state, so you're not going to get much more energy out of it, and He3 has a similar problem to H2 - there just isn't all that much of it around. Moreover virtually all fusion has the problem that it releases far more neutron radiation than fission per MeV, and most of the remaining energy is usually released as gamma rays. In the medium term H1-B11 fusion is likely the best candidate for clean fusion since it uses common isotopes, produces minimal neutron or gamma radiation, and releases virtually all of its energy as fast He4 nuclei from which energy could (in principle) be extracted with high efficiency. The problem is simply a smaller reaction cross section requiring much greater "temperatures", I think the Polywell folks are the only ones making any noise about being able to pull it off any time soon. Of course the energy per nucleon is no better than fission, but that's not actually much of an issue unless we're talking the fuel mass requirements for interstellar voyages.

Paywalled

[jamesl]

Once again, Slashdot promotes and links to a paywalled source.

Re:Paywalled

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Slashdot. You're not supposed to RTFA!

Toxic?

[cnaumann]

Neither ruthenium nor iridium should be particularly toxic. Because of their rarity, very little is actually known about their toxicity. The metals are very inert, and most of the salts are insoluble in water. Their toxicity should be similar to platinum. Ruthenium currently trades for about US$100/troy oz, iridium trades for about US$1000/troy oz.

Re:Toxic?

[hvdh]

For those who have never heard about troy ounces: that's around 3200US$/kg (2500€/kg) for Ruthenium resp. ten times that for Iridium.

Snake Oil

[tomhath]

Linked articles are long on hype and short on data. The "green" angle is irrelevant, but this would be the perfect complement to the cold fusion reactor we'll all have in our basements.

Re:Snake Oil

[belthize]

What link did you click, here's the paper linked to:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/03/27/science.1233638.full

The last sentence in the paper:

Given the broad applicability of this approach and the acute stoichiometric control of the metal compositions, we contend that the PMOD technique opens an entirely new parameter space for discovery and optimization of new heterogeneous electrocatalysts.

is the "hype", which is preceded by several pages of data.

Re:No, it won't

[belthize]

If possible I'd mod GP as -5 Informative (i.e. intended to be informative but failed miserably) and you at +5 insightful.

As someone pointed out elsewhere...

[wanfuse123]

The problem with using this material is that it breaks down during the conversion process. This leaves you with a catalyst that doesn't work any more. Anyone know if this is true? rawcell.com

In Other News

[Anonymous Coward]

Twenty years without warming and the wheels are starting to come off the AGW bus.

Re:In Other News

[Hunter Shoptaw]

Did you read the article? Never mind, You've already shown you don't read articles.

Re:In Other News

[Anonymous Coward]

I did read it.

After relaying the facts it then went into the same old fear mongering by quoting a bunch of people saying the facts didn't matter and that we are all doomed anyway.

Most notably, someone upped the period of no warming that it would take for them to reconsider their models from 15 years (which was the new standard) to 30-40. Keep moving those goal posts!

 

Re:In Other News

[StoneyMahoney]

FTFY - "Most notably, someone upped the period of no warming that it would take for them to reconsider their models from 15 years (which was the new standard) to 30-40. Keep refining our scientific understanding based on observations!"

30-40 years is a pretty small pause when considered in context of the time scales we're dealing with here. By some staggering coincidence, it's also your IQ range.

just a fyi

[Anonymous Coward]

a regular oz =~28.35grams

a troy oz is a tad over 31grams

Storage and compression

[Lennie]

I lost a lot of fait in hydrogen when I had seen the car which runs on compressed air. The pressures used to compress the air for that car is less than the pressures needed to compress hydrogen is usually compressed.

As I understand it hydrogen needs to be compressed because it is very voluminous and the containers would be to large to be useful otherwise.

I believe hydrogen is also compressed more than with cars running on natural gas.

Re:Storage and compression

[zwarte piet]

Hydrogen can also be stored in liquid form if you don't mind having your tank cool to cryogenic temperatures during operation.

Re:Storage and compression

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, hydrogen has less energy density than natural gas, but much more than simple compressed air. Compressed hydrogen can supply work both by expanding and through electrochemical reactions. Compressed air work comes solely from expansion.

Re:Storage and compression

[Lennie]

Yes, but have you ever seen a hydrogen powered car or other device that actually uses that extra energy from expansion.

Would it kill you to even RTFA subject?

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes a lot of energy to get a small amount of hydrogen and takes a lot of hydrogen just to store a small amount of energy.

The whole point of TFA is about finding new ways so it doesn't "takes a lot of energy".

Catalysis does not change energetics

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever wrote the summary doesn't understand what catalysts do. Catalysis speeds up a reaction by reducing the activation energy required to initiate said reactions. The starting reactants and final products are the same, and thus the energy required to drive the reaction is exactly the same. Catalysts CANNOT directly affect the efficiency of a chemical reaction, they can only speed the rate of reaction.

hydrogen ICE is dead, FCV dream persists

[spage]

Nobody is making a hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine. BMW only made 100 7-series hydrogen models in 2006, and the Mazda hydrogen Wankel (2008) was never produced in quantity. It's tough to store a lot of it hydrogen a car, so you need a more efficient powerplant than blowing up a fuel to make heat and a little forward motion. That powerplant is a fuel cell, essentially reversing electrolysis to drive an electric motor. Fuel cell vehicles are out there, Honda has leased a few dozen FCX Claritys in Southern California, the only place in the USA with a handful of public H2 refueling stations.

The latest optimistic date for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to be finally really genuinely truly here is 2015, and Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz and maybe Toyota are most serious about offering models. But the relative success of the Volt and the Ford and Toyota plug-in vehicles shows far more people are happy to plug in at home for their regular commute and use a conventional gas engine as an occasional range extender. "Early adopters ready to spend big money" will mostly buy Teslas with huge battery packs that can recharge (slowly) anywhere. The market of rich environmentalists who don't have access to a plug and live near the handful of H2 refueling stations and who regularly drive long distances is TINY, and will remain so until fossil fuel becomes vastly more expensive.

yeah but

[gzuckier]

Hydrogen is still a pain in the ass to deal with; it attacks metals, it doesn't behave nicely when compressed (although that's typically solved by absorbing it on some solvent-soaked cardboard in the tank or some such, as with acetylene), it's leaky since it's such a small molecule, and it's hard to see the flames when it burns.