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Process may lead to less complex hydrogen fuel storage

Hydrogen is one of the alternative fuel sources that researchers are studying in an attempt to replace fossil fuels. Hydrogen is a combustible fuel source that produces no toxic materials when burned making it safe for the environment. The problem is that storing hydrogen in required quantities is a challenge.

In December 2009, Russian space program technology led to a breakthrough in storing hydrogen. The breakthrough involved storing hydrogen inside a capillary array constructed of long, thin tubes of extremely strong glass. A group of researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University, Peking University in Beijing, and the Chinese Academy of Science in Shanghai has shown a new breakthrough in hydrogen storage.

The international team was able to show that an applied electrical field can significantly improve the storage properties of hydrogen. The approach could one day lead to less complex synthesis of hydrogen fuel storage and improved thermodynamics and reversibility for the process. 

Study leader Qiang Sun Ph. D said, "Although tremendous efforts have been devoted to experimental and theoretical research in the past years, the biggest challenge is that all the existing methods do not meet the Department of Energy targets for hydrogen storage materials. The breakthrough can only be achieved by exploring new mechanisms and new principles for materials design."

Sun and the team of researchers proposed a principal for the design of a new hydrogen storage system using materials with low-coordinated, non-metal anions that are highly polarizable within an applied electric field. The finding by the team showed that an external electrical field could be used to store hydrogen just as an internal field can store hydrogen due to charge polarization of a metal ion.

“Using an external electric field as another variable in our search for such a material will bring a hydrogen economy closer to reality. This is a paradigm shift in the approach to store hydrogen. Thus far, the efforts have been on how to modify the composition of the storage material. Here we show that an applied electric field can do the same thing as doped metal ions,” said Puru Jena, Ph.D., another of the project researchers.

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Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By exploderator on 2/3/2010 3:43:59 PM , Rating: 5
Hydrogen is not a "fuel source". An intermediate fuel yes, but not a "source" in the traditional sense of oil, coal, wood, nuclear, etc.. In fact, "fuel source" is a limited term: energy source or energy supply are much less confusing terms that more accurately capture the intended meaning of the original and somewhat antiquated term "fuel source". I would ignore this point, but far too many people get confused by the notion that hydrogen is a primary source of new energy, which it is not.

For anyone who needs clarification: all hydrogen does is allow us to re-package energy in a clean way. We use an actual energy source (usually electricity, heat or chemical energy) to separate hydrogen from more complex chemicals (water, methane), into pure raw hydrogen, which holds a large amount of chemical potential energy (it wants to rejoin with oxygen releasing energy). Then we can store and transport the hydrogen, and use it in engines and fuel cells that can convert the chemical energy back into electricity, mechanical energy, and heat, where and when we need those forms of energy instead (vehicles, generators). In contrast, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind, coal and oil are all true primary sources of energy: new raw energy we didn't have before we utilized them. Hydrogen is only a carrier, that we have to make ourselves using other energy (from actual sources), and usually at a significant loss due to process inefficiencies as well.




RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By Motoman on 2/3/2010 4:23:30 PM , Rating: 4
Yes.

Hydrogen, at least in the way we'd be dealing with it, is essentially a battery. A very expensive, explosion-prone battery.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By geddarkstorm on 2/3/2010 5:36:31 PM , Rating: 1
Something (called chemistry) tells me it isn't as explosive as, say, gasoline or lithium. *rolls eyes*

It's also not in limited supply like either of the other two (lithium more so than oil). And can be used in a variety of other ways that, again, the other two cannot. It's already more efficient than gasoline, and minus the horrid toxicity of lithium.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By Motoman on 2/3/2010 5:38:49 PM , Rating: 2
...not in limited supply? Huh. Something (called chemistry) tells me that it's not going to be found in any pure form (like H or H2) anywhere...having it locked up in H2O or any other compound is useless to us. To wit, the natural supply is zero.

And I'm not sure that it isn't more or less explosive than gasoline - but the fact remains that it is still explosive.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By geddarkstorm on 2/4/2010 1:11:24 PM , Rating: 2
Err, and you think we just pick up lithium or oil off the ground in a ready to use form? Really?

Hydrogen is the most abundant substance, and we don't need it in H2. In fact, it isn't in H2 with this technology, is it?

And if you want to know, free hydrogen ions aren't that rare. There's something called pH? Ever heard of it? It measures the negative log of the concentration of /free hydrogen ions/ in solution? Yeah. We use hydrogen everywhere in chemistry, there's no problem harvesting it, just a matter of deducing the most cost effective, efficient way for our infrastructure.

So, I don't think you quite mean to say what you did say. Just think a moment.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By porkpie on 2/4/2010 2:01:22 PM , Rating: 2
"Yeah. We use hydrogen everywhere in chemistry, there's no problem harvesting it"

Um, not sure how you think we're going to use free hydrogen radicals in water or any other fluid as a fuel source.

If you're going to go that far, then gasoline is as unlimited as hydrogen. After all, we have an unlimited amount of carbn and hydrogen atoms floating around...all we need to do is find them, piece them together, and voila! More gasoline.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By geddarkstorm on 2/4/2010 2:08:00 PM , Rating: 2
Make more gasoline? Ironically, that is what biofuels are about, using organisms to piece hydrogen and carbon together into gas and diesel.

Also, how can we use hydrogen /ions/ not radicals (radicals are different than ions. Oxygen can form an oxygen radical, where there's a singlet electron left over, making the oxygen highly reactive), by binding up the hydrogen ions to a metal matrix. As in.. read the article above. That's exactly the sort of stuff they are doing right there. Using a metal matrix, applying an electric field to charge the metal, and driving the hydrogen ions (as only ions can associate with metal ions) to associate with it at high densities.

Aluminum oxides have also been used to this effect last year, but without electricity, and simple chemical reactions in aqueous solutions. However, to release the hydrogen again required a catalyst that used up the aluminum metal. Although recycleable, it was rather cumbersome.

So, want to try that from the top again?


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By porkpie on 2/4/2010 2:18:43 PM , Rating: 2
"Make more gasoline? Ironically, that is what biofuels are about"

Why do you say "ironically"? Of course the efforts are related. But current biofuel research isn't focused on producing the pentane/heptname/heexane+ mixture we call gas. If we invested more money into researching shale oil/tar sand or even direct coal-petroleum conversion (something the Germans were doing back in WW2) we'd be a lot better off.

"That's exactly the sort of stuff they are doing right there. Using a metal matrix, applying an electric field to charge the metal, and driving the hydrogen ions ..."

Um, but they START with concentrated hydrogen gas. They're not picking a few free hydrogen atoms out of a slightly acidic fluid. That's the point you seem to be missing here. There are basic entropy considerations involved.


By geddarkstorm on 2/4/2010 2:24:01 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Why do you say "ironically"? Of course the efforts are related. But current biofuel research isn't focused on producing the pentane/heptname/heexane+ mixture we call gas. If we invested more money into researching shale oil/tar sand or even direct coal-petroleum conversion (something the Germans were doing back in WW2) we'd be a lot better off.


It was ironic because of the last thing you said in your previous post. And actually, bio-gasoline has been done in small scales and still worked on. That doesn't mean it's the best way to go, as you point out, as doing more shale oil/tar sand stuff is far easier with today's technology, and we have more than enough.

But we /can/ put carbon and hydrogen together to make gas ;). The question is, do we want to over other methods? Is it efficient? Etc. That's being researched and worked on, just like hydrogen techs.

quote:
Um, but they START with concentrated hydrogen gas. They're not picking a few free hydrogen atoms out of a slightly acidic fluid. That's the point you seem to be missing here. There are basic entropy considerations involved.


You forget where it's already been done in solutions and aluminum. The hydrogen gas has to be converted into hydrogen ions catalytically on the surface of the metal. Gathering them out of solution is more than fiesable. The fact is, it's a lot faster to use the gas as, just as you said, the gas is concentrated and has a higher density. It would take a lot longer to gather from water by simply relying on water's dissociation constant, rather than catalytically cleaving the hydrogen from water (such as platinum is used).

The point is, hydrogen is everywhere, and we can get it through myriads of ways. The question is, what's the best way? I didn't say harvesting it as ions directly from solution would be efficient or useful in the end, but more than possible~ Generally, we just convert it to gas from the solution to /speed up/ the process. Also, that works nicely to purify out the hydrogen from all the other free metallo ions floating around in solutions, that can gum up the works.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By randomly on 2/3/2010 7:10:15 PM , Rating: 5
Unfortunately due to it's volatility and extremely wide range of ignition mixture ratios Hydrogen is much more likely to be ignited than gasoline (static discharges easily set it off) and the resulting fuel/air explosion can be be quite violent. I would much prefer to take my chances with gasoline and the non-volatile Lithium batteries than 10,000psi hydrogen storage tanks.

As others have mentioned Hydrogen is not a fuel source it's used essentially as a battery. It's advantages are that:
1) It's non-toxic as is it's combustion product (water)
2) Although there are no sources of free hydrogen, it can be extracted from water, although at a high cost in energy.
3) It's a gas so it's feasible to fill up a tank relatively quickly (10 minutes). This is equivalent to it's 'recharge time' as a battery.
3) it's light weight so energy/kg is fairly good, although storage tanks can only hold about 5% Hydrogen by weight so this is reduced by a factor of 20.

The disadvantages are:
1) It has a poor efficiency as an energy storage medium, typically only about 20% (compared to 90%+ for lithium batteries). This means that you lose 4 units of energy for every 5 units you start with. This makes the usable energy out very expensive.

2) Storage and transport problems- Storage is difficult, bulky, and energy intensive. Significant energy is required to compress hydrogen, transport by pipeline is also very energy intensive because of the very low density. Storage tanks are very bulky for the amount of energy stored. Transport by truck is expensive and energy intensive. It takes 20 hydrogen tanker trucks to transport the same energy as 1 gasoline tanker truck. Hydrogen tanker trucks also use considerably more energy since they are essentially always at full gross weight whether full or empty.

3) Cost of producing Hydrogen is very high, unless you start with natural gas. However if you start with a hydrocarbon fuel source Hydrogen fuel cells are less efficient well to wheels than simple diesel/hybrid technologies. Using a hydrocarbon fuel source negates any environmental advantages hydrogen might have.

Although Hydrogen is an interesting energy transport approach and it's technically feasible, it is not currently economically feasible nor are there any technologies on the horizon that promise to change this substantially. However it continues to be an effective Eco-Green marketing tool for some companies so it continues to be deceptively promoted and over promised. The reality is unfortunately not nearly so promising.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By AnnihilatorX on 2/4/2010 7:06:56 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
3) it's light weight so energy/kg is fairly good, although storage tanks can only hold about 5% Hydrogen by weight so this is reduced by a factor of 20.

The disadvantages are: 1) It has a poor efficiency as an energy storage medium, typically only about 20% (compared to 90%+ for lithium batteries). This means that you lose 4 units of energy for every 5 units you start with. This makes the usable energy out very expensive.


The above point assumes there will not be any breakthrough in storage technology, and precisely reseach like this is doing. There is a technological limit on how close you can pack hydrogen atoms surely but we are no way near it yet. And it surely won't involve 15000 psi tanks as you would mention, it would have to involve nanotechnology and material science.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By randomly on 2/4/2010 10:28:35 AM , Rating: 2
You are just speculating that there may be some undiscovered hydrogen storage solution. There also may not be. Currently there is not, nor any known approach that shows great promise.

My point is that there is no currently known approach that is superior from a cost and energy efficiency than the current high pressure gas cylinders.

The very physics of the problem means there is not going to be any vastly better solutions. The problem with all the adsorption type approaches is that the more hydrogen they can hold the harder they cling to the hydrogen and it takes more and more energy to get the hydrogen back out again. These storage energy losses further degrade the overall energy cycle efficiency.

It's certainly possible that a solution could provide a higher volumetric hydrogen storage density than compressed gas cylinders, it's unlikely though that it will have lower energy storage losses than the 12% achieved by compressed gas. Liquid hydrogen costs you about 30% of your energy, most other approaches are even worse.

This is not a new problem, it has been researched for decades.

Besides, the storage energy losses are not the dominant cycle losses. Even if you disregard the storage energy losses a Hydrogen fuel cell cycle efficiency is still only about 25% efficient.

Whether you solve the storage problems or not it doesn't change the fact that it's not an economically viable energy storage system. As technology advances things will be better in 10-20 years, but there is no guarantee at all that they will be good enough since we have so far to go and we are already bumping into the physical limits.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By porkpie on 2/4/2010 2:05:40 PM , Rating: 2
"The very physics of the problem means there is not going to be any vastly better solutions."

There's no theoretical limitation to H2 storage efficiency approaching 100%. In practical terms, though, I agree its not very likely we're going to do much better than we already can. Not in the next 40-50 years or so, at least.

Without a radical breakthrough in battery tech, gasoline is going to our best solution for a long time to come. Even in a century if and when we start to run out of natural petroleum, we can always just make more, out of nothing but co2 and water.


By randomly on 2/4/2010 5:11:36 PM , Rating: 2
A useful hydrogen storage solution needs to meet multiple requirements, these include volumetric density, weight efficiency, cost, and the energy storage efficiency (how much energy you lose storing the hydrogen and then recovering it). There are thermodynamic limits on energy storage efficiency when you compress the hydrogen into a small space. If there weren't you could run a perpetual motion machine off the process.
At any rate the higher the storage density the higher the energy losses tend to be.

Gasoline can be somewhat displaced by the PHEV approach such as the GM Volt where limited daily commute travel is battery powered, even without major battery advances. However you are probably right that it will be a long time before anything can displace gasoline for high energy requirements such as long distance travel, trucking, and airplanes. Most people don't understand how amazingly energy dense hydrocarbon fuels actually are.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By JediJeb on 2/4/2010 11:51:24 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
3) Cost of producing Hydrogen is very high, unless you start with natural gas. However if you start with a hydrocarbon fuel source Hydrogen fuel cells are less efficient well to wheels than simple diesel/hybrid technologies. Using a hydrocarbon fuel source negates any environmental advantages hydrogen might have.


In a sense it would not be so much different from gasoline, since gasoline does not come from the ground in its usable form. How much difference is there in the energy input to crack and distill gasoline from Crude Oil than the energy required to electrolyze hydrogen from water? Also about a year ago on this site was an article about someone working on a catalytic process to generate hydrogen from water that required very little energy, if that can be perfected then it would make hydrogen a much better energy source. So many of the comments I see here about hydrogen needing large amounts of energy input to produce always seem to make it appear that hydrocarbon fuels require little to no energy to process which is not true.

I agree that hydrogen is not yet ready for primetime, but neither was gasoline when the first cars appeared. People wanting cars helped drive the technology for producing better and better gasoline and diesel fuels over the last 100 years, I believe if the demand for Hydrogen fuel increases then we will see some advances in its production also.

Here in the lab where I work we have a small unit that produces 0.5L of hydrogen per hour from water. Not what you would need to run a vehicle but that technology has been around for years. Our unit is producing 99.999% pure hydrogen which is overkill for a fuel source so if you didn't need that purity it would make it faster and without the expensive pladdium filter in it.

For safety hydrogen will disperse much faster than gasoline and the risk from cooking in a fire from it during a crash is much lower. Also I can never figure why so many worry about storing it in a high pressure cylinder when many young kids are running around with high pressure cylinders of Nitrous Oxide in their trunks that are probably not stored nearly as safely as a hydrogen fuel cylinder would be. As far as hydrogen embrittlement is concerned if you change out the tank every year or so there would be nothing to worry about on that either.

Hydrogen may not be the ideal fuel system yet, but it still isn't the monster of inefficiency and danger it is made out to be. Actually if you talk to people who work in refineries you probably won't find one that hasn't seen an explosion there, so all in all gasoline and hydrogen are not that different in their problems. The one advantage hydrogen potentially has is the ability to produce it from non-polluting means. Petroleum is going to pollute in some form no matter the process used to refine it, even if you use hydroelectric for the energy input, you will still be left with the tar residues and the emissions from using it as a fuel. Natural gas even takes energy to filter and compress, and emits some pollution when burned. Hydrogen has potential, but without some money going into research it will never be fully utilized.


By randomly on 2/4/2010 7:14:28 PM , Rating: 2
Yes there is always an energy cost to extracting (or producing)a fuel and processing and delivering it to it's end use location.

The problem with hydrogen is not having an energy source that is low enough in cost when you have to include the overall losses in the system. Oil takes less energy to extract and process, but even more critically it is it's own energy source for that extraction and processing. Remember when you buy a gallon of gasoline, it's already been extracted and processed and those costs are included.

The high cost of hydrogen production is especially true with any source of electrical energy. To produce 1Kg of hydrogen in an automotive refueling sized facility takes around 75 Kwh of energy. However with a fuel cell you can only recover about 16 Kwh of energy from that 1Kg of hydrogen. This means you have to put in about 5 times the energy that you get out. This large overall energy inefficiency is one of the primary reasons why Fuel cell interest is waning. Certainly fuel cells are technologically possible, they just aren't economically viable with current technology.

All this stuff has been researched for decades and although tiny incremental improvements continue to be made there are no sure technological breakthroughs and there is such a long way to go to make this whole thing viable it's unlikely to be a competitive technology in less than 20 years, if ever.

The safety of hydrogen vs gasoline is an endlessly debatable topic. Some aspects are worse, some better. I think the only way to settle the argument would be to put fuel cell vehicles on the road and see what happens. I think reasonable safety can be achieved and that it's not a deciding factor.

Embrittlement of the tanks is not a factor since composite carbon fiber or kevlar wound tanks are needed to achieve reasonable weight and volume goals. Metal tanks are too heavy and too bulky.

Unfortunately the hydrogen purity does have to be very high as the fuel cells are easily poisoned by impurities.

I don't see the safety issues as a major obstacle, these can all be reasonably addressed. The overall economics of the system though seems very doubtful at the present time.

Hydrogen is just a different kind of battery, and it needs to compete with other battery technologies on cost, efficiency, volume, and weight. Unfortunately it suffers from very poor efficiency. Until such time as you've displaced all hydrocarbon generated electricity on the grid there are better places to use your alternative electrical power sources than making hydrogen.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By geddarkstorm on 2/4/2010 1:28:20 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Unfortunately due to it's volatility and extremely wide range of ignition mixture ratios Hydrogen is much more likely to be ignited than gasoline (static discharges easily set it off) and the resulting fuel/air explosion can be be quite violent. I would much prefer to take my chances with gasoline and the non-volatile Lithium batteries than 10,000psi hydrogen storage tanks.


Did you read this article? Did you see what it's about? We're not talking about storing hydrogen as a compressed liquid, which is quite impractical. Also, hydrogen is so volatile, it usually diffuses to uncombustable densities faster than it burns. Hydrogen is not very explosive, and doesn't work as a combustable fuel source. Unless, we're talking about hydrogen bound up in a solid state form such as linked to a carbon back bone chain in something commonly called... gasoline, and organic materials.

quote:
The disadvantages are: 1) It has a poor efficiency as an energy storage medium, typically only about 20% (compared to 90%+ for lithium batteries). This means that you lose 4 units of energy for every 5 units you start with. This makes the usable energy out very expensive.


This point is fully determined by points 2 and 3, so is a red herring that needs not be directly addressed. Really, efficiency is determined by point 3 more than anything. But, if you sat back and analyzed everything that goes into harvesting and refining lithium, you would not say it's 90% efficient.

quote:
2) Storage and transport problems- Storage is difficult, bulky, and energy intensive. Significant energy is required to compress hydrogen, transport by pipeline is also very energy intensive because of the very low density. Storage tanks are very bulky for the amount of energy stored. Transport by truck is expensive and energy intensive. It takes 20 hydrogen tanker trucks to transport the same energy as 1 gasoline tanker truck. Hydrogen tanker trucks also use considerably more energy since they are essentially always at full gross weight whether full or empty.


You are assuming we're transporting compressed hydrogen, in liquid form or what not. Due to it having the lowest density of all elements, of course, if we transport it like that, it'll take more resources. On top of that, it can filter through most materials like metals, even weakening them in a process known as embrittlement.

No, transporting hydrogen in a liquid form poses endless complications. However, did you realize that when you are transporting gasoline, you're actually transporting molecularly bound up hydrogen? It is the hydrogen in the gasoline that gives it its combustible potential.

Moreover, technologies like this, which bind up hydrogen into a solid matrix allow storage and transportation that solves this issue quite nicely. Now we can move a highly dense amount of hydrogen without issues with pipelines or bulky, high pressure systems to contain a liquid. Not only that, it's an active system so releasing it at the destination is a simple matter, unlike current transportation/storage technologies.

It's the releasing part that really is our limit, as buckyballs do just fine in condensing and safely transporting hydrogen in very dense amounts. But how then do you get it back out from those? Aluminum oxides also are capable of binding up a huge amount of hydrogen then releasable by a catalyst, but again, that's not convenient for use in a vehicle.

None the less, transporting and storing hydrogen is /not/ an issue, in truth. Unless you want to try with liquid hydrogen, then be my guest, that's a really silly idea. It's the releasing it again that we are having trouble with.

quote:
3) Cost of producing Hydrogen is very high, unless you start with natural gas. However if you start with a hydrocarbon fuel source Hydrogen fuel cells are less efficient well to wheels than simple diesel/hybrid technologies. Using a hydrocarbon fuel source negates any environmental advantages hydrogen might have.


The cost of producing hydrogen isn't all that high, not if you use passive systems like Solar (concentrators), wind, nuclear, or a catalyst derived system. Have you noticed what platinum is usually used for? It takes a minute amount, and you can release a lot of hydrogen rather easily from water or other sources. In fact, there's been recent breakthroughs in using nanopores in platinum, or platinum nanobeads to vastly increase the efficiency and lifetime of these reactions while decreasing the amount of platinum needed. Making hydrogen for cheap isn't far fetched at all and pretty well solved. There's several competing technologies for that, the question is which one is the best out of the bunch, lately.

quote:
Although Hydrogen is an interesting energy transport approach and it's technically feasible, it is not currently economically feasible nor are there any technologies on the horizon that promise to change this substantially. However it continues to be an effective Eco-Green marketing tool for some companies so it continues to be deceptively promoted and over promised. The reality is unfortunately not nearly so promising.


It is /far/ closer to economical feasability than you realize. That isn't to say that biofuels and hybrid systems are not wonderful things. But there's are not even remotely as glummy as you paint. You'd be right if this was ten years ago, but you're really behind the times.

This research too potentially solves the storage/transportation problem very eloquently. It depends on how much energy is needed and how dense the hydrogen can be stored, and how storage density relates to electric field strength. Details I wish we had.

We are getting there, but we are a long ways off. Still, it's very interesting to watch as these things advance, and it's fun to see how biofuels and batteries keep making leaps and bounds too. We don't want to put all our eggs in one basket, there's a lot of different investigations going on, and who knows what'll win out, or what combination rather, to power our future. We'll only know by researching and trying.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By porkpie on 2/4/2010 2:22:35 PM , Rating: 2
"if you sat back and analyzed everything that goes into harvesting and refining lithium, you would not say it's 90% efficient."

In other words, you don't have a figure to contradict him, but you want to spitball anyway.

Actually, lithium is almost certainly MORE than 90% efficient, cycle-to-cycle. Why? Because the coulometric efficiency of any single discharge cycle approaches 99%...and you can use the same lithium for hundreds or thousnads of cycles. With hydrogen, you use it ONCE -- then you need to expend that energy to convert it back into stored form again.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By geddarkstorm on 2/4/2010 2:30:20 PM , Rating: 2
Spitball? Why don't you do it then?

We have the benefit with hydrogen as we can analyze every single step and account for nigh all the inefficiencies. You can't do that with lithium, or even gasoline. We can only ever guess when it comes to the energy we expend to gather them all. But we do know from entropy that it's always less than 100%.

Nonetheless, if we're talking about using hydrogen as storage, it's kinda disingenuous to say it's used once and then gone. Lithium is just taking electricity and storing it. Hydrogen would be put into a usable form by.. electricity, oh right, and stored. Hm. There really is no difference. The only place efficiencies come into play is how much energy is lost when you put it into hydrogen storage, verses how much energy is lost when you put it into lithium storage?

Lithium wins, of course, but that doesn't mean the whole process of lithium mining, refining, using until its unusable again, is 90% efficient. I'm skeptical beyond skeptical that that is possible, so you prove to me it is. I'll say it's less than that. And hydrogen even less.


By porkpie on 2/4/2010 9:31:02 PM , Rating: 2
"if we're talking about using hydrogen as storage, it's kinda disingenuous to say it's used once and then gone"

Not at all. The losses in a hydrogen storage system come from a) generating the hydrogen and b) packing it (either through compression into a tank or some similar means) for use. When you combust the hydrogen, you have to repeat both those steps each time.

The same is NOT true for lithium. You refine it once, and then recharge it a few hundred, or a few thousand times. You therefore amortize the original cost over many cycles...something you CANNOT do with hydrogen. I'm sure you can see that.


By randomly on 2/4/2010 10:26:44 PM , Rating: 2
Yes I read the article. Yes I saw what it's about.

1) Storing hydrogen as a compressed gas is not impractical, in fact overall it's currently the best approach available and is the baseline technology for fuel cell vehicles.

2) Yes it diffuses rapidly, but having personally singed my eyebrows and rung my ears with accidental hydrogen explosions it's hardly what I would classify as benign. I have no idea where you acquire these false ideas but it certainly does work as a combustible fuel source, ask any glass blowing artist who uses a hydrogen/oxygen torch.

3) This point is not determined by 2 and 3. It derives from the fact that electrolysis is only about 50% efficient, and the fuel cell is only about 50% efficient, and also includes the energy costs required for storage. This low efficiency has other repercussions besides the obvious impact on the cost of the usable energy out.

Your comparison of the energy to produce the hydrogen to the energy required to extract and refine the Lithium for batteries is badly flawed. The energy cost of the lithium is only incurred once during the manufacturing of the battery, and is then amortized over thousands and thousands of charge/discharge cycles. It's similar to the energy required to build the hydrogen storage tanks.

Having followed these topics for years with an engineering and physics background there is probably little you can tell me about this subject that I'm not already aware of. Yes Hydrocarbons are a wonderful storage mechanism for hydrogen, but it's not just about storing the hydrogen densely but how much energy does it cost you to get the hydrogen into and out of that storage mechanism. All these mechanisms of storing hydrogen with chemical bonds or adsoption etc. have fairly high energy losses. It does little good to have a dense hydrogen storage mechanism if it costs you another 50% of your energy.

Unfortunately technologies which bind up hydrogen in solid matrix's still have low storage densities and the higher you get the storage densities, the higher the energy losses become. Despite all the hydrogen storage 'breakthrough' announcements over the years the reality is that all these mechanisms are dismally poor in performance.

Prove me wrong, show me a single storage mechanism that actually promises to out perform compressed gas cylinders in energy efficiency, cost, volume and weight density.

I suggest you go do some research on the actual costs of solar energy, wind or nuclear. Your statement that hydrogen production costs aren't that is not supported by the data. Solar energy is exceedingly expensive, wind and nuclear less so but the overall 80% energy losses in a hydrogen fuel cell cycle make it 5 times as expensive as the power you start with. That's not even including the fuel cell costs, the hydrogen infrastructure costs, nor the fuel transportation costs. Unless you can direct me to some info on an actual working catalytic system and it's efficiency and costs I think we can ignore that option for now.

Platinum doesn't produce hydrogen. It's just used as an inert electrode. You still have to put the energy in to make the hydrogen. Platinum electrodes are already the state of the art. It's a gross exaggeration to say efficiencies have been 'Vastly' increased by nanoporous platinum. The efficiency problems still remains and it is disingenuous to state that the problem is pretty well solved and that cheap hydrogen is around the corner. This is just wishful thinking. If it were true then it would be being shouted from the rooftops and people would be pouring money into the technology. On the contrary interest in fuel cells for vehicles is waning and companies that live and breath this field and have actual money at stake, like Ballard Power Systems who pulled out of the vehicle fuel cell business in 2007, are not investing heavily.

It is far further to economic feasibility than you realize. You are basing your opinion on journalistic puff pieces about 'Amazing Breakthroughs!' almost none of which survive reality to make it to market. Try researching the actual industry and research results, the outlook is much more sobering.

Yes it would be nice to have more details about the paper mentioned, but experience has taught me that there is usually a reason why statements are made with vague hopeful generalities about the future and hard numbers are avoided. Though the phenomenon may be real, it may have no practical use in real world terms.


RE: Sorry, a nitpick / clarification
By Fritzr on 2/3/2010 6:34:24 PM , Rating: 2
fuel: Hydrogen, coal, petroleum (including separated impurities in the petroleum), wood, corn plant & most grasses.

fuel sources: water, air, coal seam, petroleum deposit/well/lake, oil shale, trees, corn field.

to nitpick, a fuel is what is used to provide energy. A fuel source is where or what you obtain the fuel from.

Free hydrogen in the air can be used in a fuel cell without applying any additional outside energy. Some hydrogen fuel sources will give up their hydrogen through catalytic processes powered entirely by the hydrogen extracted (fuel cells again)

Trees used for firewood are "batteries" storing solar power.
Petroleum is also a "battery" that stores the energy obtained by living things that converted solar power to plant material that either was directly converted to petroleum or was eaten by animals that eventually became petroleum.

There are no fuels used today that are not "intermediate" including nuclear fuels. All elements from iron on up were created by fusion reactions that required a net input of energy. In the sense that "fuel" is normally used though, hydrogen is a primary fuel. A hydrogen powered device does not care about the source of the hydrogen. To that device, hydrogen is simply "a fuel".

A process that uses another energy source to generate hydrogen and then transports the hydrogen for use as a fuel is using hydrogen as an intermediate fuel. But that definition also classifies wood, gasoline and everything else we use today as an "intermediate" fuel. Especially for "renewable" fuels.


By porkpie on 2/4/2010 11:25:50 AM , Rating: 1
"Free hydrogen in the air can be used in a fuel cell without applying any additional outside energy"

You started off pretty good, but then you said this. The flammability limit of hydrogen is far above the trace amounts one finds in the atmosphere. You could not posibly extract energy from it without first expending energy to collect and concentrate it.

Entropy's a she-bitch, but we got to deal with her.


By exploderator on 2/5/2010 4:31:39 PM , Rating: 1
In practical human terms , "fuel source" has always primarily denoted a source of naturally available burnable fuel that can be profitably burnt by humans to do work. North America was industrialized using primarily coal and wood as fuels, with oil chiming in somewhat later. "Fuel" was something you could get fairly cheaply, and burn to do some needed work, profitably. Hydro was a common energy source too, from very early times, but you didn't burn it, so it wasn't called a "fuel". We also didn't call black powder or matches "fuel", they were just special use combustibles. And if the fuel was exotic, like kerosene for lamps, then we didn't call kerosene a "fuel source", we called it lamp fuel and said we bought it at the chemists or at the general store or trading post (which would, in a limited sense only, have been the source of that fuel). Finally, and in a limited sense, "fuel source" has been used by industry to denote other industries that provide fuels for sale, often somewhat refined, or at least presumably harvested in some way. In that sense too, an individual consumer might call a gas station, a heating oil company, or the natural gas company, their "fuel source".

NOWHERE do we find hydrogen amongst our "fuel sources". We don't get it in the wild, it doesn't bubble fortuitously and cheaply off some other process as a bonus byproduct, and it isn't a place we go to buy fuel. No, hydrogen is an exotic preparation, made only at high and deliberate cost, for what is still a very rare and specialized application. If some day we get smart and move to molten thorium salt breeder reactors, we might start producing vast bulk hydrogen from water by thermal cracking. At that point, hydrogen would handily qualify as a "fuel source" in an ordinary sense, being close enough to a primary energy product, and being a burnable fuel.

And obviously, yes, ALL the energy we have on this planet comes from fusion either somewhere way back when, or from the ongoing solar inundation. No shit Sherlock.

In practical terms, oil, gas, coal, biomass, and uranium are still the common "fuel sources" for humanity. We get them cheaply enough for our work to be profitable, and we burn them one way or another. We also harvest energy from hydro, solar, wind, tide, and geothermal, and yet seldom call them "fuel".


By WorldMage on 2/4/2010 6:07:32 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Hydrogen is not a "fuel source". An intermediate fuel yes, but not a "source" in the traditional sense of oil, coal, wood, nuclear, etc..

quote:
In contrast, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind, coal and oil are all true primary sources of energy: new raw energy we didn't have before we utilized them.


Sorry, but by your own definition the only ones of the above that is a true energy source is nuclear (and even that may be debatable, as those elements were formed in the heart of a dying star, which really only leaves fusion which didn't even make your list).

It's just a matter of where you want to draw the line. All of oil, coal, wood, hydro, solar are simply extracting energy from the carriers of solar energy. I would ignore this point, but far too many people get confused by the notion that oil and coal are primary sources of unlimited energy, which they are not.


By Iridium130m on 2/3/2010 4:00:43 PM , Rating: 2
kind of reminds me of anti-matter containment fields in Star Trek... isn't it a bad thing when those give out? Doesn't the ship explode or something like that when they loose anti-matter containment (at least that was the impression I got by the angry sounding computer voice announcing that).

But seriously, I wonder if the sudden lost of the electrical field would result in explosive pressurization of the hydrogen causing a loss of containment by the glass vessels and container. Now we have an extremely flammable gas propelling glass shards everywhere... OUCH!




By Spivonious on 2/3/2010 4:30:29 PM , Rating: 2
I believe it would cause a warp core breach. Without the containment field keeping the matter and anti-matter from mixing, there's nothing stopping them from obliterating each other.


By rika13 on 2/3/2010 8:49:32 PM , Rating: 2
its not a combustion-based explosion, like dynamite or a thermobaric weapon; but a explosive decompression, like popping a balloon, but bigger, so it would rip the back half of the car apart and send shrapnel flying for a good distance


I think hydrogen is more efficient
By moenkopi on 2/3/2010 10:00:11 PM , Rating: 2
Someone here posted that hydrogen fuel consumed in a system wouldn't be efficient. If it was being consumed in an eternal combustion engine, then obviously not, but if it was consumed in a fuel cell, it would be more efficient than an ICE engine consuming natural gas (that the hydrogen might've come from).




RE: I think hydrogen is more efficient
By randomly on 2/4/2010 10:36:44 AM , Rating: 2
Unfortunately not. Fuel cells are just not that efficient when you include the efficiency losses in hydrogen production, storage, and transport. A MIT study concluded that even with expected technological advancements that by 2020 a Hydrogen fuel cell vehicle would still be less efficient well to wheels than a simple diesel/hybrid vehicle.

There is no advantage to having fuel cell vehicles if you are going to produce your hydrogen from natural gas.


By drmo on 2/4/2010 4:46:22 PM , Rating: 2
Fuel cells (with H2 from natural gas) are estimated to come right after diesel hybrids when comparing well-to-wheels (2020 predictions). (That is, they are better than gasoline hybrids.) (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/fuel-2020.pdf)
Of course, neither really can currently get us off of fossil fuels, which is the whole point isn't it? But since diesel infrastructure is currently available, diesel-hybrids make a much better current solution to reduce fossil fuel use. But in the future, if we are to get away from fossil fuels, then electricity storage from multiple sources will have to be used.

Of note is that the often touted MIT study was not based on current technology, but what would happen if there was aggressive research in hydrogen fuel cells and diesel hybrids and there were not any "significant breakthroughs" by 2020.


Really?
By geddarkstorm on 2/3/2010 2:44:30 PM , Rating: 5
The picture for this article is the Hindenburg disaster? Seriously?

Anyways. This is very interesting. It would behoove us to know the amount of power that was needed for the electric field to obtain this storage effect.

And it's also cool in that if keeping a field allows continued storage, then getting the hydrogen /out/ is a simple matter of weakening or deactivating the field. The getting out part has been a big contention for hydrogen storage methods, as you need to release it in controlled amounts for the fuel cells of course.




What about.....
By RjBass on 2/3/2010 3:46:16 PM , Rating: 3
I like the article and the idea, but since I don't really know anything on this topic I have to ask......What about when the power source for the electrical field fails?

Does the electrical field maintain it's charge similar to a battery, or does it always need and electrical source, and if it needs a source, for how long can a proposed back up electrical source keep the hydrogen flowing in the event of an extended power failure such as we often get living in the Midwest USA?




RE: What about.....
By Murloc on 2/3/2010 4:21:54 PM , Rating: 1
well I guess hydrogen storage is a problem in cars, and there can be an emergency battery and circuit.

For static applications you can just put a battery.

Anyway I think that hydrogen is intended to be created with solar wind or nuclear power, so you just can create hydrogen deposits near those plants, avoiding the need to rely on a shit power grid.


Importance of hydrogen
By texbrazos on 2/5/2010 4:19:52 PM , Rating: 2
People hydrogen is already used when we make fuels. Don't talk about it's expense. We already make it, to be used in a process called hydrocracking when making diesel and jet fuel. Making gasoline costs!!! Not just money, but environmental damage.
Hydrogen should be used in conjuction with wind and solar power.
There are already people who use solar power to create the electrolysis to split the hydrogen and oxygen, and power their homes. Nice homes with pools and hot tubs. Totally off the grid.
In fact, most major cities already have a hydrogen production facility near it.




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