Boffins FOAMING over a Nickel's worth of hydrogen As a power source, hydrogen has a bunch of problems, but at least one of them – the cost of obtaining the gas – might be closer to a solution. Right now, most commercial quantities of hydrogen are derived from fossil fuels because electrolysis of water into hydrogen is expensive. Boffins from the University of NSW reckon that …
Someone who has staked his company's future on pure electric cars isn't going to want to see advancements that make fuel cell vehicles more attractive.
Nothing prevents mostly electric cars that have less battery (let's say 60-80 mile range) and a gas tank that allows a couple hundred mile range on a full tank. Assuming that could be done less expensively than an electric with a 300 mile range you have best of both worlds - ability to run as an electric for all day to day use and "recharging" in minutes without spending trillions to rebuild the world's infrastructure to fit your model or greatly limiting where such "recharging" can take place.
Musk can tilt at windmills all he wants, but no matter how good electrics they'll have to coexist with gasoline power for decades. The more of those gasoline cars are hybrids the better for the future of electrics, the more the gasoline power is done via fuel cells instead of combustion the better for the environment.
Not to mention the impact on the environment these so called green cars have. Yes, in theory you can charge them with solar power (although solar panels themselves are not exactly clean to make) but the process of creating the batteries and obtaining the ore is very damaging to the environment (just where we can't see it). Plus they then need replacing every 7 ish years.
"Plus they then need replacing every 7 ish years"
Perhaps Mr. Worsthall would care to tell us the extent to which the mischmetall and nickel in a LiMH battery can be recycled.
It's funny how people who complain about the environmental impact of making hybrid batteries don't complain about the use of nickel in stainless steel - a major usage of the stuff - or worry about what happens to all the waste products from oil and gas extraction, coal mining, and the rest of the extraction and refining industries. While the tiny amounts of lead in the average consumer electronics product have been replaced with tin, very large amounts continue to be used in car batteries and on roofs. Lead is toxic, but people only seem to worry about it if replacing it will cause no inconvenience.
"Lead is toxic, but people only seem to worry about it if replacing it will cause no inconvenience."
Wait until their beloved iPad dies of tin whiskers or brittle solder joints. Lead wasn't added to tin solders in the 1930s because evil electronic manufacturers were twirling their mustaches and plotting the poisoning of customer, it was because lead-tin solder suppresses tin whiskers. It also tends to produce a more ductile, longer-lasting solder joint than modern low melting point, lead-free solders.
What I'd like is an electric car with a not very large battery and a power source to back up the battery. The GM 'Volt' (Ampera in the UK) comes close but it still uses the most practical vehicle power source, a conventional engine. Swapping that out for a fuel cell would be ideal.
The fundamental problem with compact, high power batteries is that there's a not a lot of daylight between them and a bomb.
Don't conflate total and rate. TNT is a high explosive, energy is released in an instant. Petrol (gasoline) is not explosive unless mixed with a large volume of air (or oxygen), normally it burns to release energy.
I'm not saying that a petrol fire is a good thing to get close to, but I think the rules for carrying a petrol tank sized lump of TNT around are somewhat more restricting than those applied to a car. There is a good reason for this state of affairs.
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"Fuel cells may be dumb for cars because of the bulk and weight, but they are a pretty good fit for solar electricity storage."
Hydrogen is an adequate fit for solar electricity storage**. Fuel cells are an expensive way of getting electricity back from the hydrogen that could be replaced with a less expensive combustion engine.
**On the topic of the article, I'd prefer to see research in a workable, economic hydrogen storage system for cars. Producing hydrogen is a solved engineering challenge - we're just negotiating over the final price of the hydrogen now, as shown by this article. The real challenge is a mobile storage system that approaches the convenience of a tank of gasoline.
Catalysts can be 'poisoned' by improper use, malfunction, impurities, reducing or eliminating their effectiveness. Manufacturing costs and security of supply are also important so yes, the cost of a catalyst can be important.
Another problem with precious metal catalysts is that they are attractive to thieves who will realise their value and potentially take advantage.
What do you think happens to the catalysts in catalytic converters? They end up spread out all over the road. To some degree that cat was a boondoggle: FoE were persuaded to support it because at the time they did not see the significance of its causing an increase in fuel consumption which is worse in towns. As a result stratified charge and advanced egr was largely abandoned, since cats require a rich mixture to provide them with sufficient heat at low speeds. A certain large supplier of precious metals was actually going around persuading companies of the benefits to the bottom line of getting on the cat bandwagon.
I'm sure that Worsthal thinks a huge demand for platinum and palladium would cause new supplies to emerge, but that remains to be proven. A technology using precious metal catalysts will cause an upfront cost spike during the introduction phase, and unless a way is found of recovering poisoned catalyst efficiently, there will be ongoing demand which will eventually exhaust supplies. Better to avoid the whole mess in the first place with a more sustainable catalyst - though nickel isn't inexhaustable.
this article appears to confuse two processes - the generation of hydrogen via electrolysis, and its subseuent use in a fuel cell. It also seems to confuse catalyst with electrode.
Just what is this new material supposed to be? A newer more efficient electrode? It cannot be both electrode and catalyst (the basic rules of chemistry rule out catalysis as a source of electrolysis anyway.)
In short, the article as written doesn't make sense
Catalysts, as I'm sure you know, increase the rate of reactions but don't alter the thermodynamics. I'm not sure how this catalyst is supposed to reduce the power required unless there's some ability to run at lower effective electrode voltage. A lot of the power in electrolysis is lost in the 'resistance' of the electrolyte between the electrodes. As you also need a conductive barrier to seperate the hydrogen from the oxygen generated then that may constitute an extra point of loss.
That is the exact way that catalysts operate in electrolysis - they reduce the electrode potential barrier, thus reducing the supply voltage needed. This used to be in the A level chemistry syllabus, I wonder if it still is?
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The point is that the thermodynamics can never be better than ~300kJ/mole. And that might be at low throughput - that energy has to be supplied one way or another. Now has this catayst made significnt progress towards this ? i.e. allowing higher throughput whilst reducing the overpotential.
(Being able to reduce the cell voltage somewhat may be benificial but the waste heat thus generated will lower the electrical energy needed for the reaction. To reach ~100% efficiency the cell voltage needs to be reduced to ~~1.5v (at realistic throughputs .which is the issue as always with thermodynamics)
It says that the nickel foam, available commercially, has iron electroplated onto it. It is then used for electrolysis. In other words, power is used twice to create the oxygen - note that the development to make the hydrogen electrode has not yet occured - it says that it "may" scale - I'd hazard a guess that the foam for hydrogen would need to be somewhat finer.
Given the amount of power used in this process, I'd very interested in an efficiency rating - X watts of power in, giving Y watts of power from a fuel cell, but I think that would have to wait a while.
It's interesting, but given how much hydrogen loves to stay bonded to whatever it's bonded to, which means "more power" to get it off, I still think that there's a while to go before the thermodynamics equations start pointing to cheaper...
Efficiency is important, but the idea behind electrolysis is that it is going to be done using wind and PV, thus avoiding the problem of the wind and sun not being available part of the time. If we run out of fossil fuels, the question is not going to be the expense of the process but the feasibility because there may be no other game in town for road vehicles.
I remain totally unconvinced that battery vehicles are ever going to be practical on a large scale due to problems of first cost, access to charging points and electrical distribution. A wind-electricity-hydrogen-fuel cell-motor cycle may be very hard to achieve but it offers a sustainable solution.
Efficiency is all of it, with current tech using electrolysis on water it takes roughly 35x the energy in to out for hydrogen fuel cell vs a battery which is roughly 1.5x.
This is why hydrogen is a stupid idea irrelevant of whether we could overcome all the other technical issues.
If the efficiency isn't there you need many more panels and turbines, the energy is 'free', but the equipment to convert it into something useable isn't.
"Efficiency is all of it, with current tech using electrolysis on water it takes roughly 35x the energy in to out for hydrogen fuel cell vs a battery which is roughly 1.5x."
True.
The first steam locomotives required in excess of 10kg of coal to produce 1kWH. Current marine diesels run around 150g of quite tarry hydrocarbons - an improvement, in fact, of around 35 times. I know that getting there for electrolysis is not going to be quick or easy - we've already had all the obvious ways of getting either - but that is not a reason for not doing the research. The possibility remains that there will be large incremental breakthroughs - as was the Diesel cycle - as well as small ones. But if nobody tries, nobody will ever know. Meanwhile, the funding for electrolysis and fuel cells is at best a tiny fraction of the various subsidies to the oil industry and the thermal cycle vehicle industry, and a minute fraction of the cost of cleaning up failed nuclear experiments (I'm not alluding to civilian nuclear power, which I support, but the bomb industry and the "commercial" reactors built to provide it with fuel.)
> What fraction of that is eventually lost from Earth?
I'd guess a small fraction of what naturally leaks out, unless we really get into H production in a big way.
Hmmm, you make an interesting point. Assuming the enviros get their way (more or less) and all future vehicles run on renewable hydrogen, along with everything else, won't that remove the Big Bad, namely carbon?
We'll need a new boogey man, and what better candidate than another atmospheric gas, one that we would just happen to be altering? After all, H lost means less H2O, so instead of the oceans rising and drowning us, they would be receeding, leaving us high and dry. Perfect! And I bet there's a way to work in the climate change wheeze too.
Hydrogen is a really dumb fuel end quote.
Why, very low energy source to wheel efficiency.
Heat source to electricity is 50% or less
Electricity to Hydrogen 50% or less
Fuel cell to electricity 50% or less
Then there are shipping and other losses.
That comes to 12.5% or less so if you start with 100kw you end up with 12.5kw
With present petrol/diesel engines about 20/25% overall.
There is insufficient clean water in the world to supply the amount needed to produce the hydrogen needed, producing clean water from sea water costs more energy. Also insufficient platinum for all the cells needed. (Asteroid mining needed).
Shipping, cracks steel pipes and container costs energy to compress or turn into liquid
quarter energy density of petrol/diesel in liquid form 4 cryogenic to one road tanker for delivery.
No infrastructure will cost billions to implement.
Very dangerous and flammable fuel.
Batteries.
heat source to electricity 50%
electricity into/out of battery 90%
So about 40% well to wheel.
Infrastructure in place, cheap to install extra outlets.
Down side low energy density and slow charge at the moment
but there is a lot of money going into research that will solve these short comings.
Some chemistries can be a fire hazard but not all.
See the Chevy Volt as the lead car for electric vehicles.
Owners love them, most charge over night and opportunity charge,
just plug it into a domestic outlet.
So anyone who thinks hydrogen is good idea needs some education in science and economics.
The best solar generators are thermal pressurised hot water these can store hot water at 400c in liquid form , which can store far more energy per unit volume than flow line vanadium batteries pop them in hot deserts and a High Voltage Direct current power grid would supply the world.
While I agree with your points, there's this: http://www.bairdmaritime.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14499:kawasaki-plans-worlds-first-liquid-hydrogen-tanker&catid=65:tankers&Itemid=56
Old news but apparently someone's betting on the fuel cell auto.
Until we find underground hydrogen, or snag a hydrogen-slush comet, hydrogen is a power-delivery system,1 same as electricity. Gasoline takes some input to get raw materials and to refine, but the end result is more power than went into producing it.2 For the forseeable future, we will have to put as much energy into producing the H2 as we get out of burning it.
So don't compare hydrogen to gasoline, compare it to electricity.
1 As discussed here. Fusing hydrogen is a whole different story.
2 We're ignoring events of a few million years ago, of course.
(Icon represents possible future of Kawasaki's H2 tanker. :-)
Any chemical which burns in oxygen in an exothermic reaction is a fuel, and that includes hydrogen. I think what you are trying to say is that it takes more energy to produce the hydrogen than we'll get from recombining with oxygen (due to inefficiencies at both steps) which is true but not the same as saying it's not a fuel. Keep in mind that the production could theoretically be done at a location/time with a low energy price, and the usage could happen at a location/time which has a high energy price, resulting in the overall process being economically viable.
As I see it, you should have massive commercial solar plants producing the hydrogen in the deserts and pipe it back to the cities for use in cars or just general power generation.
Sure it's inefficient but there are a hell of a lot of deserts you can build them.
Any chemical which burns in oxygen in an exothermic reaction is a fuel[.]True, in the narrow chemical sense. But, in the overall picture, it's no more than a mechanism to transport energy (input elsewhere) to a vehicle (for use there), just like electricity. So far as the contemporary energetics go, it's a net loss, as opposed to petroleum distillates.
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