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Power United Kingdom Science

Liquid Sponges Extract Hydrogen From Water 113

Posted by Soulskill from the solid-sponges-are-so-2013 dept.
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?
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Liquid Sponges Extract Hydrogen From Water More

Liquid Sponges Extract Hydrogen From Water

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    • Re:Nature (Score:5, Insightful)

      by i kan reed ( 749298 ) on Friday September 12, 2014 @12:58PM (#47891723) Homepage Journal

      ...

      It still takes more energy to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen than it releases by reacting.

      Do you mean, "Why not this instead of photosynthesis?"

      And that's because hydrogen is chemically unstable and hard to store compared to sugars. Neither of those are good things for living creatures.

      • Re:Nature (Score:5, Funny)

        by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday September 12, 2014 @01:18PM (#47891965)

        And that's because hydrogen is chemically unstable and hard to store compared to sugars. Neither of those are good things for living creatures.

        Exactly. Plants learned *that* lesson long before we did with the Hindenburg [wikipedia.org]. (If you listen very carefully to the video, you can hear all the plants laughing at our naiveté in the background.)

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by i kan reed ( 749298 )

          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.

          • Nature has exactly zero precedent for lighter-than air flight

            Most fish regulate their buoyancy using air-bubbles inside their bodies. Water is not air, but for a precedent it would do because Archimedes' law applies to gases and liquids equally...

            And even in the air — the way plants like dandelions spread their seed... Well, they aren't lighter than the surrounding air of the same volume, but they are light enough to not require any power for flight.

        • Re: Nature (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Promulgating the Hindenburg myth. The gas bag itself was flammable; it wouldn't have mattered what gas was in it, when it disintegrated. The burning of the released hydrogen gas caused none if the damage; it went up, and the specific heat was low. It was gone in a moment. The fire you see in the video is burning diesel fuel and oil.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            If you were to believe MythBusters, it was likely caused by a combination of both. The paint AND the Hydrogen. The result wasn't nearly as destructive when they tested either one without the other.

          • The gas bag itself was flammable; it wouldn't have mattered what gas was in it, when it disintegrated

            In particular: The paint. It contained a mix of powdered aluminum and iron oxide pigments, in sufficient concentration to maintain a redox reaction.

            You and I know this mixture as "thermite". It's really hard to get the reaction started - but an electric discharge can do it. (They tried to tether it with an electrical storm approaching. That would make one hell of a spark when the charged envelope comes

          • So was the outer skin. You can see the burning edge in the shot that shows the tail on the ground with the front drifting down. The fabric was doped with iron oxide to protect the fiber from light. Then it was given a top cover with powdered aluminum to keep the fabric from heating in the light. Very logical except that the end result was a craft coated with Thermite from nose to tail.

        • Exactly. Plants learned *that* lesson long before we did with the Hindenburg. (If you listen very carefully to the video, you can hear all the plants laughing at our naiveté in the background.)

          And when plants learned that lesson, one of them must have surely exclaimed: "Oh, the botany!!"

      • Interesting, I was thinking that Edinburgh has just got its first Chipotle's?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 )

      Call me a cynic, but wouldn't nature of done

      Call me a cynic, but shouldn't you have learned the difference between "of" and "have" by now?

      The contraction " 've" (should've) is not the same as "of", and never has been.

      *sigh* My grade school English teacher would be laughing at me right now. Now get off my damned lawn!!

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by BringsApples ( 3418089 )
      First of all your grammar just made me twitch a little bit. Replace "of" with "have", and please do it forever.

      Second, Nature knows what it's doing, it's man that's got shit backwards. Nature is was able to extract the energy from oxygen, rather than hydrogen. The current biological configuration is acting on levels higher than simple materialism can afford. No need to propel biology with explosions of the type produced by hydrogen. See here [youtube.com] for a (very basic) comparison of oxygen vs hydrogen.

      • Re: Nature (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Have course I will. Now that you have pointed it out I feel ashamed have myself. I feel as if someone just dumped a refreshing bucket have grammar on top have my head. Thank you!

    • Call me a cynic, but wouldn't nature of done this long ago as a primary source of energy for oceanic life? Take Hydrogen and combine with oxygen. Lots-o-energy with a simple path of ingestion. It's like, inhaling food!

      First of all hydrogen production does not generate energy, it consumes energy.

      Scientists are interested in hydrogen as an energy storage medium. It is unlikely that life forms would use hydrogen as an energy storage medium since hydrogen gas can practically only be stored inside a metal tank, or at least a tank lined with an internal layer of metal. Metal requires smelting which is highly incompatible with how life forms develop, so you're not going to find plants or animals with metal parts.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      Your a cynic.

  • Or is it the comparably low demand for hydrogen, due to its dangerous and/or inconvenient differing characteristics with hydrocarbons?

    I mean, either way, it's good news, but in one case it's opening a possible revolution, and in the other it's just nice to have.

    • Re:Is the expense of electrolysis the main inhibit (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Friday September 12, 2014 @01:09PM (#47891861) Homepage

      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...

      • fairly sure Iceland maintains a fleet of Hydrogen fueled vehicles, and they're just a stone's throw from Scotland.

        The question is: what is a reasonable distance? most EV have that question too.

        • A stone's throw.... for a volcano.... maybe.

        • The question is: what is a reasonable distance? most EV have that question too.

          I would say a "reasonable distance" would cover the daily needs of 90% of the general public. I accept that my needs are atypical, thus I will have to wait for an EV that meets my needs.

      • Re:Is the expense of electrolysis the main inhibit (Score:5, Informative)

        by radtea ( 464814 ) on Friday September 12, 2014 @01:48PM (#47892255)

        The next generation of attempts stores the hydrogen chemically.

        I'm not sure if it qualifies as "the next generation" when it has been studied since well before my now-adult children were born.

        Skepticism with respect to hydrogen exists in part because some of us have heard this tune before. Storage of hydrogen in metal sponges is nothing new, and they have some very nice theoretical properties, including reasonable volumetric energy density, which is a big problem for hydrogen.

        Getting up to 1/5 the volumetric density of fossil fuels--which is the likely upper limit--would make hydrogen cars more than competitive with electric vehicles. But so far no one has managed that, despite continuous work on the problem.

        For some reason TFA doesn't say anything about the long history of storing hydrogen in metal sponges, or make clear what makes this one different, although one can guess that as a liquid there are likely metal particles in suspension and that gives a huge surface area advantage.

        It's almost as if the articles were written by junior staff members with no actual knowledge of hydrogen storage technology, but since we live in a "knowledge based economy" where STEM skills are in incredibly high demand there is no way reputable news organizations like the BBC would do anything like that, right?

      • Re:Is the expense of electrolysis the main inhibit (Score:5, Informative)

        by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday September 12, 2014 @02:00PM (#47892363)

        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.

        Not really. Natural gas is methane - CH4. It's about 35-85x more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 [wikipedia.org]. If you're converting methane to hydrogen, then converting that to CO2, you're not reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, but you're still helping reduce the greenhouse effect.

        All this is of course contingent on what would have happened to the methane if you weren't using it as fuel. Methane is primarily a byproduct of oil drilling. Until recently energy prices were low enough that it wasn't cost-effective to capture it, so oil companies just burned it as it came up the wells (those fires you see on top of long poles at oil fields). So since it was going to be converted to CO2 anyway, converting it to hydrogen to be used in fuel cells is actually carbon neutral. If oil production drops enough that we need to drill for methane specifically to keep up production, then it starts being carbon positive.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

          What is done with the carbon when the methane (CH4) is converted to hydrogen, can it be captured and stored?

          Because using the hydrogen itself wouldn't cause CO2 - there is no C or O in pure H.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

          PS it is 100% not carbon neutral that logic is utterly fallacious.

          "So since it was going to be converted to CO2 anyway, converting it to hydrogen to be used in fuel cells is actually carbon neutral."

          Either way - NOT carbon neutral.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gaelfx ( 1111115 )

      There are a few changes that jump out at me as being significant:

        • 1. This process works at atmospheric pressure (so there is no need for it to be pressurized)
        • 2. The resulting hydrogen can be stored in the liquid sponge, so it too would not need to be pressurized (this is probably good for transporting it)
        • 3. This process requires less electricity than current methods using PEME's (unless I misread something)
        • 4. The extraction is much faster using this method (so it will probably scale up much more easily)

    • Well the argument that it is better for the environment never really holds much.
      So to get people to switch we need the following.
      1. Cheaper then our current sources of energy. A little cheaper we can get some traction, a lot cheaper we will get good movement.

      2. Economics 101 low demand means low price. The issue is low supply (in terms of it being packaged) that is keeping its price high. Making a technology to do this cheaper will help improve supply because people can produce Hydrogen and make money of

      • Why is it always "econ 101" with you guys? Reducing things to the basics is a great way to engage in reductionistic dismissal of reality. Simple economic policy to place externality costs onto energy producers could radically change what defines "the cheapest".

        • Seems to me you are arguing FOR econ 101, when you think you're arguing against it.

          To be able to do a "real" supply vs. demand comparison, you DO need all costs involved included.

          • What I'm saying is that these guys go "Supply/demand the end" without consider how those factors are considered. It's far too simplistic and it's like the a sphere of uniform density in a frictionless vacuum is to physics, in that it helps you understand the concepts, but applying it so simplistically is going to get you bad results.

    • Steven Chu: I think, well, among some people it hasnâ(TM)t really shifted. I think there was great enthusiasm in some quarters, but I always was somewhat skeptical of it because, right now, the way we get hydrogen primarily is from reforming [natural] gas. Thatâ(TM)s not an ideal source of hydrogen. Youâ(TM)re giving away some of the energy content of natural gas, which is a very valuable fuel. So thatâ(TM)s one problem. The other problem is, if itâ(TM)s for transportation, we don

    • Remember, you can't bypass thermodynamics. Water is the end-product of burning hydrogen. So any energy released when you convert hydrogen to water, is also energy you must put back to convert water back into hydrogen. You can't get something for nothing. Otherwise you create a perpetual motion machine where you burn hydrogen for energy, convert the water back into hydrogen, then burn the hydrogen again for more energy, repeat.

      Electrolysis is just a way of putting that energy back into water to conver

  • This ignores the big problem of hydrogen, leakage (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Obscene_CNN ( 3652201 ) on Friday September 12, 2014 @01:08PM (#47891849) Homepage
    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... [nature.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This discovery allows the hydrogen to be stored and created at regular atmospheric pressure, since it is stored as a liquid acid. So at least during storage and production, I think this discovery solves that.

    • Any form of gas has that problem. Methane and gas from wells also have a high leakage rate.

      Doesn't mean we don't use LNG or methane in fuel cells, though.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        True, but Hydrogen is especially problematic in this regard because it is too light for earth's gravity to hold it in, and any hydrogen that doesn't recombine with oxygen in the atmosphere to form water on its way upward will just escape into outer space. In a nutshell, if we were to actually do this at large scales, we would eventually run out of water.

        • Yeah, right around the time that the sun is boiling our water anyway.

        • If you are worried about running out of water by doing this on large scale industrial process then you have far too few concerns in your life. Seriously we have use about 1 trillion barrels of oil in all of human existence, or about 55 trillion gallons. Assuming that all 1 trillion barrels of oil were used in the last century and if we used water at the same rate it would take somewhere around 5000 years to completely drain Lake Superior [umn.edu] and by volume there are bigger lakes and on top of that there is still

    • 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... [nature.com]

      Your own article says "Although its environmental benefits would still far outweigh any drawbacks.", so maybe you're overreacting a bit.

  • Electrolysis still required, says TFA (Score:5, Informative)

    by brambus ( 3457531 ) on Friday September 12, 2014 @01:08PM (#47891853)

    The process uses a liquid that allows the hydrogen to be locked up in a liquid-based inorganic fuel. By using a liquid sponge known as a redox mediator that can soak up electrons and acid we’ve been able to create a system where hydrogen can be produced in a separate chamber without any additional energy input after the electrolysis of water takes place.

    • So this is click-bait, people are going to think these sponges do passive electrolysis. Well, I suppose the sponges need to be used for something, since the cold-fusion thing didn't pan out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gaelfx ( 1111115 )

      My bad :P

      • Re:Electrolysis still required, says TFA (Score:5, Informative)

        by brambus ( 3457531 ) on Friday September 12, 2014 @01:24PM (#47892043)
        It's still an interesting article. It seems they've found a way of cheaply producing ammonia from hydrogen. Not sure they meant ammonia exactly, but they mention "liquid-based inorganic fuel" and later talk about how ammonia is important for fertilizer, so I'm kinda guessing that's what they're making. Ammonia can then be used to either make fertilizer, liquid fuel substitutes and a bunch of other interesting processes.

  • Another Summary: Scheduling hydrogen release... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 12, 2014 @01:09PM (#47891865)

    I've found this difficult to understand what has been accomplished, and I found this other summary helpful. From sciencemag.org:

    Scheduling hydrogen release from water

    Photosynthesis splits water to provide protons and electrons for plant growth; oxygen is a by-product. When chemists split water, they're also more interested in making fuel, and the simplest product is hydrogen (a combination of protons and electrons). One challenge is keeping the reactive hydrogen and oxygen product streams separate. Rausch et al. present a scheme that captures the protons and electrons in a molecular cluster of silico-tungstic acid. Later, they expose the cluster to platinum, coaxing the acid into releasing hydrogen. Eliminating the mixing risk increases the potential for household use.

  • Very intriguing... (Score:3)

    by mpthompson ( 457482 ) on Friday September 12, 2014 @01:15PM (#47891927)

    This appears to be a power-efficient process that on the back end produces a bluish liquid which contains a high quantity of hydrogen. When this liquid is combined with a metallic catalyst it then releases the hydrogen at normal atmospheric pressure/temperature without requiring any further electricity.

    I wonder if the bluish liquid could serve as a hydrogen storage mechanism that is both easily transportable and transferable between containers such as liquid fuels today? Does production scale to industrial quantities? Is it non-toxic and non-explosive (while kept away from a catalyst)? Lots of questions not touched on in the articles.

    However, for hydrogen vehicles, the ability to transfer useful quantities of hydrogen fuel at room-temperature liquid and normal pressure could be a real boon. Let's hope this provides a possible path to practical hydrogen vehicles.

  • It takes more power to separate hydrogen and oxygen from water than you get when you burn it..

  • What they actually accomplished (Score:4, Informative)

    by Required Snark ( 1702878 ) on Friday September 12, 2014 @01:31PM (#47892111)
    This is from the Science article summery.

    The electrolysis of water using renewable energy inputs is being actively pursued as a route to sustainable hydrogen production. Here we introduce a recyclable redox mediator (silicotungstic acid) that enables the coupling of low-pressure production of oxygen via water oxidation to a separate, catalytic hydrogen production step outside the electrolyzer that requires no post-electrolysis energy input. This approach sidesteps the production of high-pressure gases inside the electrolytic cell (a major cause of membrane degradation) and essentially eliminates the hazardous issue of product gas crossover at the low current densities that characterize renewables-driven water-splitting devices. We demonstrated that a platinum-catalyzed system can produce pure hydrogen over 30 times faster than state-of-the-art proton exchange membrane electrolyzers at equivalent platinum loading.

    Or in even simpler terms

    Photosynthesis splits water to provide protons and electrons for plant growth; oxygen is a by-product. When chemists split water, they're also more interested in making fuel, and the simplest product is hydrogen (a combination of protons and electrons). One challenge is keeping the reactive hydrogen and oxygen product streams separate. Rausch et al. present a scheme that captures the protons and electrons in a molecular cluster of silico-tungstic acid. Later, they expose the cluster to platinum, coaxing the acid into releasing hydrogen. Eliminating the mixing risk increases the potential for household use.

    Note that platinum is still required, but it works 30 times more efficiently. Also the pressure needed is much lower.

  • We're roughly on the 2nd' generation of car battery technology. Advances are being made in labs seemingly at a weekly bases, with reports of 2-3x power storage, 10 times charge speed etc etc.

    Here is just 1 example of literally dozens: http://www.gizmag.com/dual-carbon-fast-charging-battery/32121/

    Most people won't want a Leaf that has a 80 mile range. Will they buy one with a 240 mile range with a lower cost? One that when you drive it into your garage it recharges over wireless (which the tech is already he

  • According to the article the biggest potential is as energy storage solution. (both meanings of the word solution).

    To free hydrogen from water, you need energy, not low quality energy like heat but high quality energy in the form of electricity. So there is no special advantage there. You still go through hydrolysis. But instead of releasing hydrogen as a gas, you dissolve it in this oxide solvent. The liquid can be stored at room temp and pressure without the danger of leaks, fire or explosion. When you

  • people should understand that re: 'hydrogen powered cars' and equipment, if the source of the hydrogen is electrolysis powered by electricity which is ITSELF sourced from traditional coal and natgas power plants, then the environmental impact is not at all the rosy scenario people wish it would be. the promise of a hydrogen economy (vis a vis being environmentally clean) is to take the green impact all the way to the sourcing of the hydrogen production stage.

    the real problem with renewable energies (lik

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      I think there's a lot of value in looking at how to use hydrogen generated with renewables, especially when the source like solar or wind is capable of generating when the power isn't needed. During those periods the efficiency of energy conversion to hydrogen almost seems like it shouldn't matter because the energy is essentially free -- we can generate it but don't have any other use for it.

  • All those small other manufacturers may be either ignoring it or doing secret research projects the depths of their garages.

    Or the article simply ignored the one company which has been quite publicly showing off a hydrogen car for the past 7 years. The BMW Hydrogen 7 [wikipedia.org]

  • Small hydrogen from water units have been common for decades to power jewelers torches. In industry much larger gear exists to provide fuel for welding and it all works great. Yes, electricity is consumed in liberating the hydrogen but so what. If that electricity comes from solar, wind or tidal generation all the transaction involves is using electricity that would be wasted to generate hydrogen. Obviously that same hydrogen could be used to power turbines at night or on windless days.

  • someone needs to engineer a conversion unit that is safe from accidents. This process relies upon a controlled release of hydrogen from the solvent by a careful (and small) reaction with a catalyst. If the catalyst component were suddenly submerged in the liquid solvent (such as might happen if a car bumper forced the component through a containment wall), there would be an uncontrolled release of hydrogen that would be accelerated from any heat resulting from combustion of that hydrogen.

    Gasoline doesn't co

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