More Progress On Hydrogen-Air Fuel Cells

blamario writes: "Check out this article from Ottawa Citizen. It describes one particular fuel cell design by Ballard Power Systems and includes several quotes from various other institutes and companies, all racing to produce the engine of the future (and then collect the royalties):."

Bzzzzt! WRONG!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go look up "catalyst" in a dictionary (or better, a chemistry textbook).

impressive goals

[apsmith]

selling hospital generators and portable generators in the next few years, having fuel cells in commercial vehicles by 2005? This is starting to look like it will actually happen! Wow!

Fuel cell improvements may also be critical for space development - particularly for a lunar base where the 14-day "night" means you need some kind of large-capacity energy storage system. Fuel cells using in-situ oxygen and in-situ or imported hydrogen could solve that problem very nicely!

who cares WHERE the CO2 gets produced?

[darkonc]

Certainly the planetary ecology doesn't care. If you produce Hydrogen from natural gas, the by-product is going to be CO2 (unless you can produce hydrogen, oxygen and pure carbon). In other words, CO2 is still being produced. It's just hidden from the consumer.

This actually produces an 'out of sight - out of mind' problem. If people don't see the polution that their vehicle/energy use is causing, they consider it 'clean'. This might lead to them using more ('clean') energy and then we get bushwacked when the CO2 that's being (remotely) produced still messes up our environment and contributes to the global warning that we're trying to stop (beyond the localized city pollution).
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Pollution at a distance...

[LostOne]

I notice that the article takes great pains to mention the fact that hydrogen production need not be "pollution at a distance". Granted, the most likely situation is going to be "let's keep the oil companies in business" but at least this article mentions alternatives unlike most of the doom and gloom pieces.

There was also a remarkable amount of almost useful detail in the article!

One Point

[Alpha State]

This is an excellent article, however there is one point I have to make. It seems the media are heavily biased against coal power generation, believing it is heavily polluting. While burning coal generates more CO2 than most other forms of power generation, it does not necessarily release large amounts of other pollutants.

The quantities of SO2, NO2, metals and other pollutants depend heavily on the quality of coal used. Where I live (NSW, Australia) most electric power is generated from black coal, which has low amounts of pollutants. In addition, modern power stations equipped with filters capture most of the pollution which would enter the atmosphere. In fact much of the waste can be converted to fertiliser or inert filler. Carbon monoxide emissions are close to zero due to the efficient, high-temperature combustion.

While coal-fired power stations are a non-optimal solution, it makes no sense to simply rule them out without any investigation of the facts. For the media to do this is particularly bad, as the public will be against coal power in their ignorance, and another option to improve generation capacity will be lost.

What about the tanks?

[Woefdram]

The main obstacle is the expected cost and weight of hydrogen tanks for vehicles.

Forgive me my ignorance if I'm asking a question that's already been answered, but wasn't the problem with hydrogen that the molecules are so damn small that they simply leak through the tanks? Has that problem been solved or am I seeing problems that don't exist?

I read about fuel cells quite some time ago and I must say, it looks promising. This would be an interesting addition to the diesel discussion [slashdot.org] here on /. earlier this week.

It seems that the natural gas option is the best one, but I think it could be a lot better. Windmills were mentioned, but I think that's not all. There are great projects going on for pollution-free energy. Think about what great place the Sahara desert could be if it would be stuffed with solarpower stations! Blazing sun all day long, enough to provide the entire world of hydrogen.

Think about the oceans, they can be used to generate enormous amounts of energy. Think of all those tons and tons of water, moving steadily from A to B in tides and gulfstreams. Put a few big watermills in it and you have both water to convert to hydrogen and energy to do so. I'm not talking bullshit here, I read articles about these ideas. I remember one about giant balloons some place near the seashore: they rose at high tide and sank back at low tide, thus generating energy.

Sadly, that's going to take a while. First off, there's the problem of millions of cars using petrol/diesel that will not be traded in for new ones with fuel cells in one day. Neither will gas stations be provided with hydrogen pumps overnight. So what I foresee is that we're going to have hybrids: vehicles that have a fuel cell but can also run on regular fuel. And from this point, I think we're going to need the government to invest a whole lot of money in providing the infrastructure needed to make hydrogen available all over the country (I'm talking about the entire world here, so this is something every government in the world would have to do). Once that's completed and fuel cells can be used without too many problems, it's time to cash in on the investments by increasing taxes on fossile fuels bigtime. I think we should start by sending George W. Bush on the first manned mission to Mars, he wouldn't understand anyway.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. It would take years, but I think it would certainly be worth the effort.

Re:impressive goals

[corran__horn]

But look at the actual results of all the alternative power systems, few to none have been released. there was talk of solar, nuclear, and "renewable" energy sources (hydrothermal), but how many of these have entered widespread use?

MY TWO BITS 0&1

If people can connect to one another even the smallest of voices will grow loud.

Re:The dilemma: pollution vs. bootstrapping

[Technician]

Um unless I'm mistaken, It's hard to make carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide when burning hydrogen in the engine. You won't get these products until you start burning something else for fuel. I don't expect these gasses even in an internal combustion engine unless it starts burning oil.

Re:impressive goals

[Technician]

Geothermal is used where it's plentiful and cheap to acquire and not protected as in a national park. Most of the town of Klamath Falls Oregon is Geothermally heated. The temprature is too low for power generation but is sure cuts the winter heating bills.

U.S. government page on hydrogen research

[Dammital]

An interesting summary of DOE-sponsored research in hydrogen production, storage, transport and use is here [doe.gov].

The dilemma: pollution vs. bootstrapping

[Spamalamadingdong]

Excellent article. I particularly like the detail on the issue of market penetration: it happens to be much better for CO2 reduction to make hydrogen from natural gas and put only hydrogen on the car, but putting gasoline or methanol in the car's tank and reforming it on-board is far more likely to be accepted by near-future consumers and create a bigger market for the cells themselves.

A better illustration between virtue and practicality would be harder to find. I suppose one could have the worst of both worlds, where the company tries to go the off-vehicle reformer route and consumers stick with internal combustion engines, causing no improvement in either respect.
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You didn't read the article, did you...

[Spamalamadingdong]

Hydrogen doesn't occur free on earth in significant quantities. This raises the question of how it is to be produced, and the byproducts of the process. If the original energy source is a fuel containing carbon, there's the potential for releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. If the fuel carried by the vehicle is methanol (CH3OH) then it's all but certain that the carbon will be exhausted to the atmosphere. If the system uses stationary reformers and loads only hydrogen onto the vehicle, in principle the CO2 could be sequestered (pumped down old oil wells) and released over a very long period if ever.
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You should. It makes all the difference.

[Spamalamadingdong]

who cares WHERE the CO2 gets produced? Certainly the planetary ecology doesn't care.

Sloppy thinking, faulty conclusion. The planetary ecology doesn't care how much CO2 is produced, only how much is released... and that is a function of both the efficiency of the process and whether it is produced by stationary or mobile sources; a stationary process has options for post-processing which a mobile process does not.

In principle, the CO2 output of a stationary gas reforming plant could be combined with certain minerals or pumped into spent oil or gas wells; this CO2 would get to the atmosphere very slowly if at all. What do you think this would do to the planetary ecology, exactly?
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This is not Hydrogen-Air

[Hilary Rosen]

The fuel cell is Hydrogen-Catalyst. There is no combustion going on.
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