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Liquid Sponges Extract Hydrogen From Water
New submitter gaelfx writes: Researchers at Glasglow University have an interesting method for separating the hydrogen out of water: Liquid Sponges. Most methods of extracting the hydrogen involve some form electrolysis, but these generally require some pretty expensive materials. The researchers claim that they can accomplish this using less electricity, cheaper materials and 30 times faster to boot. With both Honda and Toyota promising hydrogen fuel cell cars in Japan within the next few years (other manufacturers must be considering it as well, if not as publicly), does this spell a new future for transportation technology?
This ignores the big problem of hydrogen, leakage. Currently about 10% to 20% of all hydrogen produced is lost to leakage. This has serious environmental ramifications. Hydrogen leakage will cause bigger and longer lasting holes in the ozone layer. By making hydrogen production cheaper and easier it just makes the leakage problem worse. http://www.nature.com/news/200...
I don't want to do a sig now
I am interpreting your first question as "Is the expense of electrolysis the main inhibitor of a hydrogen-fuel economy?" I believe the answer is "sorta, but not really." The cheapest way to get hydrogen is from natural gas. The problem is that the whole reason to move to a hydrogen economy is to become carbon-neutral. If you use natural gas mines, you defeated the purpose. So to that point, a cheaper form of electrolysis might help.
Your second question is really a chicken-vs-egg question. There's low demand, because there aren't hydrogen-powered vehicles. But that is because it is difficult to store the hydrogen with sufficient density to make a car that can travel a long-enough distance. Compressing it takes time, wastes energy, and makes the tanks heavy and expensive. The next generation of attempts stores the hydrogen chemically. But bear in mind that there is already a really really good way to store hydrogen chemically. In the US, we call it "gasoline" and it is great because all you have to do is burn it, and it releases the energy from the hydrogen-carbon bond! Awesome! Perfect! Right? Ooops, that darned carbon-neutral thing again...
This joke falls kinda flat because it reads like you're trying to make a point. Like maybe some kinda "nature is always right" naturalistic fallacy.
We still do lighter than air flight with helium(and in the case of weather balloons, hydrogen). Nature has exactly zero precedent for lighter-than air flight, but it's not a bad idea.