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Big Advance In Hydrogen Production Could Change Alternative Energy Landscape
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Virginia Tech say they've had a genuine breakthrough in alternative energy production that could shake up the world's energy structure. Specifically, they've hit on a way to derive large amounts of hydrogen from any plant source. The method uses renewable natural resources, releases almost no greenhouse gasses, and needs no costly or heavy metals. The key is using xylose, the most abundant simple plant sugar, to produce a large quantity of hydrogen that previously was attainable only in theory."
At least for use in cars, I believe there's still the problem of storing enough of that hydrogen to get any decent range. Nice to hear we're making progress though. Yay humanity!
If we colonize Mars, it won't be the World Wide Web anymore. UWW?
The majority of input energy would be solar, growing the plants. the machinery used to harvest and transport it wouild run on electriciy and fuel cells just like everything else. It is just a matter of A) generating enough plant matter, and B) getting the infrastructure to critical mass to become sel sustaining.
Sure, it sounds far fetched. But hey, you have to start some where some time. Right?
"Waitress I need two more boat-drinks..."
Even more unbelievable (at least for a "layman" like me) is this claim:
"Even more appealing, this reaction occurs at low temperatures, generating hydrogen energy that is greater than the chemical energy stored in xylose and the polyphosphate. This results in an energy efficiency of more than 100 percent — a net energy gain."
TFA says "Even more appealing, this reaction occurs at low temperatures, generating hydrogen energy that is greater than the chemical energy stored in xylose and the polyphosphate. This results in an energy efficiency of more than 100 percent â" a net energy gain." Truly we will have to reexamine the laws of thermodynamics in light of this discovery!
Xylose is otherwise pervasive, being found in the embryos of most edible plants.
Well, that should be enough information to trigger the food crops/fuel crops flame-warriors for the next few years.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Electric cars are a given; they simply have way to many enticing benefits (tremendous power, simplicity).
No matter how much batteries improve, we'll simply not be able to fill them as conveniently we do normal vehicles. Putting plugs everywhere is totally impractical.
Hydrogen solves all of the issues with batteries while still giving us electric cars. Sure there are some issues now but as articles like this show, over time there will be advances in both generating and storing hydrogen. It's only a matter of time before hydrogen cars totally replace electric cars because of simple utility, and (sadly) the ability to have a more normal taxing structure applied to fuel.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am sure big oil would gladly shift to a new technology.
Here is the problem...
Gasoline offers the following advantages. High Energy Density. Can be stored and shipped easily, relativity safe (compared to other that would kill you at the first smell or explode more violently) Doesn't require a high infrastructure to deal with.
Now if we can get Hydrogen cheap and fuel cells cheap enough to make affordable cars that people will buy. I can see the big oil companies starting to shift to the hydrogen market. They already have ways of shipping, and retailers for their product. They will just switch products.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Not so fast, heat pumps have an effective efficiency higher than 100% (in reality it's because it takes some energy from the surroundings). I suspect something similar here.
While hydrogen can be used as a fuel, it makes more sense for it to be used in ammonia production. The #2 most-produced chemical is ammonia and it is most commonly produced using natural gas which produces CO2 as a by-product.
Ultimately, the true test of this new process is how do the costs compare to steam-reforming of natural gas into hyrdogen?
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
The idea is that you put in plant matter and X amount of energy, and you get X+Y worth of usable hydrogen energy out of it (due the the conversion of plant matter to hydrogen).
Previously, you put in plant matter and X amount of energy, and you got X-Z worth of usable hydrogen energy.
If you take H away from sugars the carbon has to go somewhere. Does it become charcoal, buckyballs, hydrocarbons, alkenes or an aromatic nasty?
There is energy in the plant mass. The full equation is
plant mass + input energy = output hydrogen energy + waste plant mass
Entropy is still preserved in the overall system.
Actually we could give them transponders and put electrical infrastructure in the roads for inductive chargers, whereby your car could report your account to the utility company and the utility could charge for your power usage.
Alternately, we could just let the Government do it, but when you renew your registration you have to turn in your mileage, and they forward that to your utility, and bill you.
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A Hydrogen economy STOPS green house gas emission from transportation, litters our roadways with H2O instead of oil and disrupts power in the Middle East.
SO...
What are we waiting for? We could extract our asses out of the deserts of the world with simple plant processing now
That's because they're giving it 110%.
Big oil already owns many of the worlds top green energy companies. For example BP has been one of the top producers of solar cells for many years. Your ire would be better directed at those actually putting up road blocks to green energy.
Energy companies are in the business of selling energy, and frankly they typically don't care what that source of energy is. Most companies sell gas, propane, diesel, and natural gas at a minimum and many have business relationships that go far beyond that.
Doesn't require a high infrastructure to deal with.
You ever seen a refinery? The infrastructure for gas and food is actually very fragile. We're pretty lucky that everybody gets along so well to make it work.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I have a sugar-burning engine that can slurp sugar and do work. It's called a "horse". It has fairly serious emissions problems though and a bad disposition occasionally. But on the whole it can get you where you need to go.