Researchers claim hydrogen energy advance | Hacker News Reader

Researchers claim hydrogen energy advance

gla.ac.uk

98 pointsIstof29 comments

Slightly more information: http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_358595_en.html

Full paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6202/1326.abstract

anyone with access to the full paper, is there an estimate of how much time is required to commercialize this? I love reading about discoveries and such but many are years off and I could not find such information in the linked articles

Any details on what the energy density is of this "liquid sponge" they're using?

If it isn't corrosive or difficult to store then it may be an option for large, stationary batteries, but it would be a really big deal if it's energy density is even comparable to ethanol. Pure ethanol is 76,330 Btu/gal and gasoline is 116,090 Btu/gal: http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/fuel_comparison_chart.pdf

The editors summary at the Science link says it's silico-tungstic acid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicotungstic_acid

The university press release talks about replacing fossil fuels in fertilizer production, from that I would guess they aren't pushing it as a storage solution.

Thanks, we changed the url to that first one from http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-291683....

This sounds interesting. Not real clear about details, but apparently it uses silicotungstic acid, a common oxidative catalyst. Water electrolysis produces oxygen, which would be catalytically oxidized to peroxide, binding O-, and presumably the H+ is bound somehow as well. Later hydrogen (as H-H) and oxygen are recoverable without further energy input, much as oxygen is released from hydrogen peroxide because it's already at a higher energy state.

That's as much as I can glean from the paper's abstract. Perhaps some folks out there can read between the lines better than I'm able to.

I gather the utility of the technology is not so much for high demand applications, like electric cars, but more for large scale electricity generation, replacing (or augmenting) current fossil-fuel sources feeding the electric power grid.

I don't think hydrogen has any chance of working in cars anymore, not when through the combination of solar panels and batteries, cars can run virtually for free. That said, it's probably good to see research continue on this, since we might end up using it for other purposes.

I am not sure that battery production could scale up to 50 millions vehicle produced each year, without mentioning we will also need to replace a significant part of the installed base regularly. We can however hope that self driving car would significantly reduce the number of car needed.

Self-driving cars would not reduce not number of cars produced. If anything, it would increase it, since going somewhere would become easier.

Self-driving cars may change the model from "everyone needs one" to Uber-esque "there's a shared fleet, one shows up when you ask" model.

All electric cars take hours to charge off of 120v or 240v mains at up to 10kw. There's no way you're powering your car with even a garage roof full of solar cells this way, unless you want to wait days for the car to charge. 85 kwh is a lot of capacity to fill.

But if your solar panels are generating energy and storing it in a large capacitor (like Bloom Energy does) for later release, then it could -- in theory, at least -- be pushed to the car much faster than a standard 120/240v main.

You could buy a Nissan Leaf, which I think the the most efficient mainstream electric, and build out a really nice solar array and charge up more than a few miles a day, but the cost of that array is going to be pretty rough. All said and done probably more than the car. That's just not feasible for most.

>Currently, industrial production of hydrogen relies overwhelmingly on fossil fuels to power the electrolysis process.

Currently 95+% of hydrogen is produced from natural gas via steam reformation (releasing just as much CO2 and fugitive methane as burning it), which also uses lots of heat (read: coal). With such an enormous factual inaccuracy, it's hard to take the rest of the article seriously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming

Uh, coal and natural gas are both fossil fuels.

Edit: As long as we're using wikipedia links for citation, here's the one on fossil fuels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel

They are fossil fuels, but extracting hydrogen from natural gas does not use electrolysis. So the article is factually incorrect, yes?

Ah yes, I see. I thought you were saying that coal wasn't a fossil fuel and that's what the error was.

That was a different person who replied, but their explanation is correct!

Furthermore, the distinction is much more than just pedantic. Hydrogen production from electrolysis (which theoretically can be carbon neutral) is about 3x as expensive as hydrogen production from steam reformation (which realistically can't be carbon-neutral). And I'll give you one guess which method all the hydrogen articles talk about…

When put in those terms, it becomes quite obvious that the whole operation is a fossil fuel bait-and-switch.

http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/en/consumer/hydrogen/basics/producti...

When you have cheap hydrogen it is relatively easy and cheap to use the Sabatier reaction to produce methane (and capture co2 from industry in the process). Basically natural gas. Easy to store and handle. Carbon negative.

Isn't there still the problem that storing hydrogen is impractical?

Yes and No.

Storing liquified gasses is a solved problem. The auto-industry at least has been experimenting with Liquid Propane Gas for a while, without issues. Actually most automobiles in Turkey run on LPG.

Hydrogen is a slightly different animal, colder temperatures, and more explosive. We know the materials that will work, we know how to produce them. Its more of an engineering/production/economy of scale issue then anything else.

Hydrogen storage is significantly more difficult than LPG.

The pressures need to be higher, which means stronger and more expensive tanks. It also means we must input more energy to compress the gas for storage.

Hydrogen is also significantly smaller and more reactive than NG. Which also means the tanks are more expensive as they need to be resistant against corrosion. Additionally, the valves and seals in the system need to be of a higher class as hydrogen is more prone to leak.

Hydrogen embrittlement of metal storage tanks can also be an issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_damage

And then of course, since you can not stop the hydrogen from leaking, you have to make sure that the storage for the hydrogen storage is sufficiently secure.

Can't keep the car in the garage.

Also the density of liquid hydrogen is extremely low, meaning you need a huge tank to store more than a little bit of it.

The story claims that they are "locking up the hydrogen in a liquid." They say they are actually producing the hydrogen in a different chamber from where the electrolysis is done. They don't discuss the possibility of storage in this intermediate liquid, however.

Maybe it would be possible to store the liquid and release the hydrogen only when it is actually going to be used.

How long will it take to put this technology into production?

I hope this makes my childhood visions of ocean floating hydrogen production factories come true!

How would the hydrogen be used? Directly as a fuel, or as a means to create electricity ?

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