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New Catalyst Allows Cheaper Hydrogen Production

Posted by timothy on from the keeping-the-attic-warm dept.

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."

21 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Nonsense. by mosb1000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Nonsense. by theshowmecanuck · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

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      -- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
    2. Re:Nonsense. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

    3. Re:Nonsense. by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Nonsense. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  2. It might be helpful. by Mr.+Chow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...

    1. Re:It might be helpful. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:It might be helpful. by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:It might be helpful. by mpe · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:It might be helpful. by Internetuser1248 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  3. hydrogen equals poor storage of energy by slack_justyb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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

    2. Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy by dmbasso · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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...

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      `echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
    3. Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy by gatkinso · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

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      I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
  4. Cheap hydrogen? by SpaghettiPattern · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

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    I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
  5. Hype as usual by JaWiB · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...)

  6. nuclear weaponry != chemistry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:nuclear weaponry != chemistry by rossdee · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

  7. Re:catalyze by RandomUsername99 · · Score: 3, Funny

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

  8. Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end by AaronW · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

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    1. Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

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