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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.