Cheaper, Cleaner Hydrogen Without Platinum 295
keithww writes "Looks like the hydrogen economy may have gotten a whole lot cheaper. Wisconsin team engineers gas from biomass
using common metals of tin, nickel, and aluminum instead of platinum. This looks like a good way to get rid of biowaste also." Of course, there's still a long way to go before the automotive industry is using it, but it is good news nonetheless.
Hydrogen from biowaste is stupid. (Score:3, Informative)
The only argument against methane is its mind alterating effects (halluzinations etc), so drug addicts might use it as a substitution for heroine and crack.
Re:Never underestimate the power of a lobbyist (Score:3, Informative)
Some companies are better than others, for example BP (British Petroleum) have realised this, and decided to hedge their chips and are putting money into fuel cell research.
Ozone? (Score:3, Informative)
bah...we should screww H and just use this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hydrogen from biowaste is stupid. (Score:4, Informative)
Also, you don't know that about the price. You can't possibly know the price of this process versus the price of methane extraction from biowaste.
I've personally heard something of the methane experiments and every one that I've heard about hasn't been able to produce enough methane from the waste to justify extracting the methane - it was always a very energy-costly operation that produced too little to be useful.
Do you have a link that says why methane is a better idea than hydrogen? Or any links for reversable methane reactions (this is one of the big deals for hydrogen? Burning hydrogen is an almost completely reversable reaction, so you can use it as a rechargable fuel source).
I'm willing to be convinced to the contrary, but from what I've heard about it, burning hydrocarbons doesn't seem to be as long-term or effective of a solution as burning hydrogen does.
Re:Mr. Fusion, meet Mr. Anti-Matter (Score:4, Informative)
Gamma ray energy, that is.
Note also that antimatter annihiliates any matter it touches.
Core problem 1 is how to produce antimatter cheaply, and in enough quantity. Right now, it's only produced in particle accelerators.
Core problem 2 is how to transport it. If it's charged, you can use a magnetic bottle, but if it's not....
Core problem 3 is how to change the gamma rays into something useful. Gamma rays, you may recall, only interact with heavy metals (e.g. Pb) enough to really consider it. (Sure, they interact with, say, DNA, but not very often, compared to the number that get through unaffected). And even in things like Pb, it's only attenuated not stopped. The gamma rays might excite an electron, but that'll fall back to ground state, giving another gamma ray. It might interact with the nucleus, warming the substance a very little bit, but that's it. We don't have a good way of converting gamma rays into, say, heat to provide steam for traditional turbines.
Re:The Hindenburg, Mark II (Score:5, Informative)
Argh but I get tired of people using the Hindenburg as proof hydrogen is dangerous.
The Hindenburg burned because of the paint that was used, which is chemically similar to rocket fuel [carolina.com].
Hydrogen burns with an invisible flame. Watch the footage - it's not the hydrogen that's the big problem.
If I had to be in a car crash, I'd prefer a hydrogen car to do it in. Gas tank ruptures, hydrogen floats off. Gasoline lays in puddles underneath me.
Weaselmancer
Re:48 hours... before what? (Score:5, Informative)
Probably before the catalyst element corrodes too much that it needs to be replaced, as it's efficiency drops too much.
(most)Catalysts work by letting chemicals bind to them temporarily, before the chemicals go on to complete their reaction. In this case the biomass breaks into smaller chunks when it bind onto the catalyst and then the chunks are reduced further to produce the Hydrogen.
In a perfect catalyst, the catalyst would remain unchanged after the process. However some of the reaction products could get left on the surface of the catalyst (which physically blocks that bit of the surface ), also the surface could be deformed at a microscopic level (ie the atoms of the catalyst get moved about) which stops the catalyst from working as the chemicals are unable to bind to the surface.
Or it could just be catalyst in the EU hitting the working hour limit....
more info links (Score:1, Informative)
the process essentially can turn sugars and carbohydrates into either hydrogen or hydrocarbons.
Here are some relevant links:
http://www.virent.com/technology.htm [virent.com]
http://www.engr.wisc.edu/industry/atwork/9.html [wisc.edu]
glass recycling especially. (Score:3, Informative)
Turns out its far better to simply bury it. When you recycle it, first it has to be cleaned with highly caustic and dangerous chemicals which must be barrelled after their use (toxic waste).
When you melt it down, it requires alot of heat. The energy to create that heat has to come from somewhere - most often natural gas burners. So recycling glass actually consumes large amounts of fossil fuels.
And why not bury it? Glass is made from melted sand, something we're not likely to run out of soon, and doesn't harm the environment as you're simply putting the sand back into the earth.
Crushed glass makes an excellent landscaping material for constructing terrain like golf courses, then cover it with topsoil.
Re:48 hours... before what? (Score:5, Informative)
The catalytic activity degrades over time - but stabilizes at 72% of initial activity after about 48 hours of use. They published data out to 60 hours of use. (since I eat lunch with John & George on a semi-regular basis, I can find out Monday how far they actually tested, but for now that's the best I can tell you.)
So if you're wondering why the activity degrades over time, that's an easier and harder question to answer. It's easy, since it's one of a couple of likely culprits - impurities in the feed stream can poison (ie, react with) the catalyst; the catalyst might physically break down over time, the metals in the catalyst might rearrange themselves over time (like tin on the catalyst surface might migrate to the sub-surface), etc. The hard part is figuring out which one (or how many) of these things are actually happening.
And as an aside, I can't believe it's a story in
Re:Never underestimate the power of a lobbyist (Score:4, Informative)
still many problems with hydrogen (Score:4, Informative)
there are still a lot of problems to be solved with hydrogen:
in the meantime, let's improve battery technology, fuel cells, and develop pebble bed nuclear reactor technology...
Re:Cars... (Score:3, Informative)
C//
Voodoo science (Score:2, Informative)
Before talking about hydrogen vehicles, you should read Robert L. Park [aps.org]'s "Voodoo Science" [amazon.com]. It explains clearly why all this hype about hydrogen is just crap.