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Hydrogen Fuel Balls from a Gas Pump?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon May 22, 2006 09:29 PM
from the quite-a-racket dept.
from the quite-a-racket dept.
navalynt writes "New Scientist reports that the Department of Energy has filed a patent for hydrogen fuel balls. From the article 'The proposed glass microspheres would each be a few millionths of a metre (microns) wide with a hollow center containing specks of palladium. The walls of each sphere would also have pores just a few ten-billionths of a metre in diameter.' They are supposedly safe and small enough to be pumped into a fuel tank in the same manner as gasoline."
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Government patents and other considerations. (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't is a bit disturbing that the government files patents to prevent us from using stuff that we paid them to invent?
So what happens to all the bits of glass and palladium after it releases its hydrogen load?
I guess ideally, it would get saved somewhere for recycling - but presuming that doesn't happ
en - is it going to be OK to breath microsopic bits of that stuff?
Re:Government patents and other considerations. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Government patents and other considerations. (Score:4, Informative)
I think it's theoretically part of a goal to do a "technology transfer" from the DoD to the private sector. But I don't see why patents need to be part of that. Patents were meant to give you a limited monopoly SO THAT THE RESEARCH EFFORT WAS A GOOD INVESTMENT. But the DoD (and taxpayers) *already* covered the cost of investment.
Parent
Re:Government patents and other considerations. (Score:4, Informative)
The idea goes something like this:
Technology takes time and money to develop. Unprotected ideas are of no interest to an investor, as there is no guarantee that someone else will simply walk up and make off with the idea. Patenting an idea means that you can then license it to someone who can raise the millions of dollars it takes to develop a working device, driven by the incentive to make money.
This ensures that the initial idea can actually get developed. It doesn't matter how good an idea it is, if there is no economic incentive to get it working. Otherwise it simply gets left by the side of the road.
Ideally the license deal should also return some money to the state, to the benefit of the taxpayers who initially funded the concept. It is also worth bearing in mind that the patent only lasts for 20 years, and is written in such a way that it is a full, public disclosure.
And, yes, I have worked in IP.
Parent
Re:Government patents and other considerations. (Score:3, Interesting)
So, to be clear, you're saying that the government charges money for licensing so that there is a higher barrier to entry for licensees, which reduces competition against the richest of licensees -- thus inducing them to make the investment in manufacturing, advertising, and distribution.
I call shenanigans. The way you're saying it kind of comes across like, "Well, a patent creates a 'free monopoly' ticket. Someone has to use it! If nobody is granted an effective monopoly, how can anyone expect to get r
Re:Government patents and other considerations. (Score:3, Insightful)
The government should simply document it so that denial of prior art would subsequently be ridiculous. I agree w grandparent post, their fi
Re:Government patents and other considerations. (Score:3, Informative)
No, they don't. You only have to protect a patent if you want to retain the rights to profit from it. If they don't defend the patent, they will lose the right to do so in the future, but at the same time that effectively prevents anyone else from filing one by creating a very public and well documented case of prior art.
Re:Government patents and other considerations. (Score:2)
Obviously, it gets recycled into Aero Glass [wikipedia.org] and Trusted Computing [wikipedia.org].
Re:Government patents and other considerations. (Score:2)
Strange... (Score:2)
Re:Strange... (Score:2)
probably wouldn't be transferred around (Score:5, Informative)
The technology is probably similar to current "sponge" type hydrogen tanks; right now you can buy a hydrogen storage tank that uses some sort of metal hydride (I forget which) that can soak up a huge amount of hydrogen, similar to this. You heat it up to release the hydrogen stored or to recharge it, similar to how you 'recharge' that volcanic rock that absorbs odors.
The stuff theoretically wouldn't leave the "tank"; this wouldn't be like going to the gas station and filling up with little 'balls' of hydrogen. Still, I agree, it's worrying. What happens when a car is involved in a serious accident that breaches the tank, and the stuff gets all over the place? Or the stuff gets contaminated with impurities and needs to be recycled?
Carbon fiber seemed like a great idea for race cars, until track workers had to start picking up bits of the stuff. Guess what? It's the same color as asphalt, and it tends to break into very sharp shards, and the particles are really nasty if you breathe them in. Ask any track worker- the stuff is a BITCH to clean up, and if you miss any, it -will- cause someone to blow out a tire.
Parent
Re:Government patents and other considerations. (Score:3, Insightful)
But, yes. My second thought was noting that after the hydrogen has been sucked out of the medium, you are left with a tank of hi-tech doped glass -- and the article doesn't get into the excretion side of things.
Presumably, before you next fil
Not compatible, sorry. (Score:4, Funny)
Is this what AC/DC meant by (Score:3, Funny)
Goodness Gracious... (Score:5, Funny)
Chef's Hydrogen Fuel Balls (Score:2, Funny)
They're big and salty and brown.
If you ever need a quick pick-me-up
Just stick my Hydrogen Fuel Balls in your mouth.
Oooh, suck on my chocolate, salty Hydrogen Fuel Balls
(Put 'em in your mouth!)
Put 'em in your mouth and suck 'em...
Not being a chemist (Score:5, Informative)
Pallaium has the uncommon ability to absorb up to 900 times its own volume of hydrogen at room temperatures.
The page includes lost of other tidbits, too. I had no idea it was such a useful metal.
Cheers.
Re:Not being a chemist (Score:2)
Re:Not being a chemist (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, from an environmental standpoint, the fact that it's valuable and rare is probably better than if it were currently cheap, since it keeps it from be being implemented as a throwaway, and creating shortages and problems later on. At least this way, we'll implement the full reclamation cycle from the beginning.
Parent
Re:Not being a chemist (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems that once the spheres are created it is possible to essentially refill them by exposing them to a high pressure hydrogen solution, and then the hydrogen can be liberated with the application of heat and a partial vacuum. My concern is how much energy would be required to complete these processes. Although engineering techniques could allow waste heat from the combustion process to be used to liberate the majority of the hydrogen, with a small amount of energy from a battery or other storage system being used to liberate the original heat needed to start the engine or fuel cell. The vacuum possibly needed to liberate the hydrogen could be obtained relatively trivially if the hydrogen is used in an Internal Combustion Engine, but it seems likely that this would be used more with fuel cell technologies which means the vacuum would have to be specially created leading to some level of innefficiency. There would also probably be some overall energy consumption required in returning the glass balls to the recharging plant, although it may be possible to recharge the balls at the gas station economies of scale would seem to dictate returning to a central processing plant (although I have absolutely no data to confirm this, simply a gut feeling.)
And of course all of this does not get beyond the fact that hydrogen is not an energy source, but simply an energy storage medium with a fair amount of innefficiencies involved in creating it. The whole process from cradle to grave is going to be extremely expensive, using a large amount of relatively rare materials in a system whose components would likely degrade over time and require replacing and servicing. I really have my doubts that this invention is going to be the final key to solving all of our energy problems, but it could very well be one more tiny tiny push for some specific applications on the way to eventually weening society from the direct need for fossil fuel usage. A cheap, convienient, plentiful, clean, safe and renewable power source is still needed to drive the whole system, and right now I believe fossil fuels as a whole are the best compromise for the whole range of requirements. Although significant technological advances in alternative energy sources as well as the eventually inevitable reduction in fossil fuel supplies will eventually tip the scales to the point that fossil fuels are no longer the most economical energy source (economical including both internal and external costs.)
Parent
Re: The efficiency issue (Score:4, Informative)
Now let us do a full cycle efficicency calc for the fuel cell. Starting with natural gas heated and cracked into H2, the efficiency is 60%. i.e. the H2 has 60% of the heat content of the natural gas we began with. Fuel cells efficiency is 80%. i.e. 80% of the heat content of H2 is available as electricity. There is no gear box. Electric motors convert electriciy to mechanical energy at >99% efficiency. Over all efficiency is 48% of the heat content of natural gas is available to the wheels of the car. This is already more than twice the efficiency of the gasoline energy to brake-horse-power to the wheels conversion.
The IC engine systems are at the pinnacle of their efficiency over 100 years of research and development and tinkering. The CH4 -> H2 reforming and H2->electricity fuel cell technology has barely started now [*]. Their efficiency will improve over the coming decades. Throw in the assorted facts like, 15% of the energy in the crude oil is spent in extracting it, refining it and distributing it or 80% of US Gas stations can be connected to the natural gas grid and reform CH4->H2 on site. The future of fuel cells is bright. They will win.
How soon can the US SUV fleet switch to H2? Well, in 1940 the entire locomotive fleet of USA was external combustion steam engines (6% overall efficiency energy_to_wheels/heat_of_coal). The diesel-electric hybrid locomotives had overall efficiency of 15% those days. By 1955, steam locomotives were dead.
[*] The principles of fuel cells are as old or even older than IC engines, but the large scale R&D effort has not yet been directed towards fuel cells and reforming CH4 compared to the R&D money poured into IC engines over the last century.
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Re:Not being a chemist (Score:3, Interesting)
Heat and pressure are heavily interlinked (look up Boyle's Law some time if you're curious) so it's not probably necessary to use reduced pressure to extract the hydrogen from the palladium: heat will do fine. In some supersonic ramjet designs, they've
Re:Not being a chemist (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not being a chemist (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh. That's a pretty reasonable question to ask about life itself
Cheers.
Parent
who said high gas prices were bad? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oy, the usual hydrogen myths (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it is far safer than gas to transport and store compared to gasoline. Why? A)It requires a stronger fuel:air mixture than gas to ignite B)It is incredibly light, so except in buildings with sealed ceilings, the stuff just isn't very dangerous (gasoline vapors are heavier than air, hence why you should NEVER store it indoors) C)It is 100% non-toxic and disperses instantly (say, in an accident.) If a tanker full of gasoline crashes- you've got a HUGE fire hazard, a major environmental disaster so you have to do something about it fast (especially if the gas contains MTBE), and the fumes are pretty toxic (and flammable, and hug the ground.) If a hydrogen tanker cracks open on the highway, the fire department just has to stand around and watch until the stuff finishes leaking out. No fire hazard since the stuff rises away almost instantly.
The biggest technical hurdle for hydrogen in a distribution network is with seals and hoses; H2 is so damn small that keeping it from escaping through seals and the walls of hoses is very difficult (same reason helium escapes so quickly from balloons, except H2 is even smaller.)
The REAL problem with hydrogen, which everyone loves to ignore, is that there IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to produce hydrogen efficiently, from a renewable resource, without leaving toxic byproducts; current methods either involve hideously inefficient electrolysis, toxic catalysts, or non-renewable resources. Guess why Bush is so hot to trot on Hydrogen? Natural gas is the current "favorite" source. Except you've got to do some nasty processes to natural gas to get the hydrogen, and you have to do something with the carbon leftover when you remove all the hydrogen atoms. The whole point of going OFF hydrocarbon fuels is to get off the CARBON which usually ends up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide! Not to mention, natural gas is NOT RENEWABLE!
"Fuel cells!" you say. Except they're very expensive, have toxic catalysts in them, and have a very finite lifetime unless you use very, very clean water. Distilled/deionized water takes a lot of energy to produce...
Re:Oy, the usual hydrogen myths (Score:5, Funny)
Hydrodgen just wants to be free.
Parent
Re:Oy, the usual hydrogen myths (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, where do we have tonnes of hot, pressurized water going to waste? Nuclear plants! The stuff in the heat exchangers i
Re:Oy, the usual hydrogen myths (Score:3, Funny)
You'll contaminate the core (of the Earth). Sounds dangerous.
Re:Oy, the usual hydrogen myths (Score:3, Interesting)
You boil the water to make steam (under very high pressure), you run it through the turbines, and you release it. When it leaves the power plant, it's still signifigantly hotter than the surrounding environment, so obviously you haven't taken all the potential energy out of it - however you've gotten what you can from turbines.
Now add an electrolysis plant to the mix. You've lost some of your power outp
Re:Oy, the usual hydrogen myths (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oy, the usual hydrogen myths (Score:3, Informative)
You apparently haven't heard of hydrogen embrittlement [wikipedia.org]. Hydrogen can diffuse into the lattice of metals and weaken them. In the case of carbon steel, the H2 combines with carbon to produce microscopic pockets of methane! Storing hydrogen is tricky business. I'm not saying it can't be done, but yo
Hybrids (See April Sci Am) (Score:3, Insightful)
The a
Calm down. It's not that simple (Score:4, Interesting)
E.g., energy density is a real problem. While H2 does have 3 times more energy density than gasoline per weight unit, it's about 10 times lighter than gasoline even in liquefied form, and thus has worse energy density per _volume_. (And hideously less energy density if you use it as compressed gas.)
But transporting and storing it liquefied is harder than you'd think, because it boils at around -253 Celsius. That's cold enough to _freeze_ air on contact. It's also going to be a pain to keep it that cold, and even in the best insulated tanks it's going to constantly evaporate. In fact, a lot of it will evaporate every day.
And unlike natural gas, you can't just compress it until it stays liquid at room temperature. If you look at its phase diagram, a liquid phase just doesn't exist anywhere above -240 C. That's where its critical point lies. No matter how much you compress it, it just won't liquefy above that. So you _have_ to keep it that cold.
E.g., if you want to talk energy, there you go, there's even more energy spent cooling it to those temperatures, and a massive waste of energy when then it just evaporates in a car sitting in a garrage for a month.
E.g., energy density isn't really helped if you have to pack it in a massive tank, either to hold it under pressure or to keep it cold. If the tank itself adds an extra half a ton to your car, you haven't really won much. (Rememeber the lower energy density, so the tank will also have to be bigger to get the same mileage out of it.)
E.g., if you want to talk safety, you don't want to be the guy that gets splashed by liquid at -253C when the tank ruptures in an accident. Or yes, when a tanker ruptures on the highway. Yes, it will eventually just rise up, but in the meantime it will instantly kill anything it spills onto.
E.g., yes, a problem is that it leaks, so you'd have hydrogen constantly leaking in your garage. Whether your roof is sealed tight or not is a moot point when you have a couple percent of your tank's capacity evaporating daily in it. That's a _lot_ more vapour produced than gasoline produces. And you can't just seal the tak shut to keep the vapours in, since the resulting pressure will eventually be tremendous. So you don't want a garrage that's just not sealed shut, you'll want one that's ventilated constantly, even in winter. Otherwise it can jolly well blow up.
E.g., the problem is made worse by the fact that hydrogen has no colour or smell of its own, so you can't _know_ if you've walked into a room full of it or not. Gasoline, for all its other problems, does have a smell. Sure, it's _unlikely_ that you'd find the room just full of it, but do you actually want to take that risk? Plus, when you talk hundreds of millions of cars, some poor bugger may blow himself up every hour. (As they say, if you're one in a million, there are 6000 just like you. Probabilities are funny like that when they involve large numbers.) Do you want to be the car manufacturer hit by the lawsuits and negative PR of that?
E.g., worse yet, it also _burns_ with an invisible flame, so you could walk into a jet of flame from a punctured hose or tanker that did ignite, and not even know it until you get burned by it. Again, you can handwave that as _unlikely_, but it's a very real problem and given hundreds of millions of cars, somewhere it will eventually happen.
And so on. And, yes, I'd be interested to know how these palladium balls address those problems. E.g., will it actually make the energy density worth it, or just dillute it some more?
And conversely, hand-waving the energy and carbon concerns as some global catastrophe is... uninformed, to say the least.
E.g., yes, we already knew that on the whole you don't get more energy from burning hydrogen than you put into splitting the water. That's obvious. The problem is that while we're damn good at producing electricity, and outstanding at making electrica
Parent
Re:Calm down. It's not that simple (Score:5, Informative)
How many times have you heard of someone getting splashed by, say, gasoline in a traffic accident? From a gasoline tanker rupture? Yes, it's bad if you get a lot of liquid hydrogen on you; you'll burn any skin surface it comes in contact with for more than a second or two. It's not instantly fatal, however, and it would take a fair bit to actually kill a person. And yes, I work with cryogenic gases.
So you don't want a garrage that's just not sealed shut, you'll want one that's ventilated constantly, even in winter. Otherwise it can jolly well blow up.
The lower explosive limit (LEL) for hydrogen gas is 18%. (For comparison, the LEL for methane (natural gas) is 5.7%, and the LEL for propane is 2.1%.) You'd need to boil off quite a bit of hydrogen to get to that level, even in a perfectly-sealed garage. Just punch a duct through to the outside from the high point in the garage (and another somewhere else to let fresh air in) and you should be good to go. Or park in the driveway.
E.g., the problem is made worse by the fact that hydrogen has no colour or smell of its own, so you can't _know_ if you've walked into a room full of it or not. Gasoline, for all its other problems, does have a smell.
Many other fuel gases lack a perceptible smell, too. Trace amounts of an odorant chemical (ethyl mercaptan) are added to propane and to natural gas so that leaks can be detected. This is very much a solved problem.
E.g., worse yet, it also _burns_ with an invisible flame, so you could walk into a jet of flame from a punctured hose or tanker that did ignite, and not even know it until you get burned by it. Again, you can handwave that as _unlikely_, but it's a very real problem and given hundreds of millions of cars, somewhere it will eventually happen.
I'll take the handwaving, thanks. Yes, hydrogen is a different fuel and has some different failure modes. One expects that commercial handlers of hydrogen are trained to anticipate and defend against the hazards associated with its use, just as they are trained in proper bonding and grounding and ventilation where they handle gasoline. If there are occasional freak accidents, hey, it happens. Getting rid of gasoline will cut down on certain other classes of accidents--the guys who try to light a barbecue with gasoline, for instance.
And so on. And, yes, I'd be interested to know how these palladium balls address those problems. E.g., will it actually make the energy density worth it, or just dillute it some more?
This is rather the crux of the matter, actually. Palladium can absorb up to 900 times its weight in hydrogen gas. Under moderate pressure, it will hold it indefinitely. No cryogenics required. It neatly addresses a lot of the safety concerns in your diatribe. The downside is that it's hideously expensive.
Parent
Not really true (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure where you got that idea. High temperature electrolysis, for example, just uses really hot water and electricity. It's about 70% efficient.
"you've got to do some nasty processes to natural gas to get the hydrogen"
Well, there are a couple things wrong with that statement. First of all, hydrocarbon reformation could hardly be described as a "nasty process". You put you hydrocarbon in with some solid catalyst, hot steam, and that's all. Second of all, it can work with virtually any hydrocarbon. Thirdly, natural gas is primarily methane, which can be produced in other ways.
"Fuel cells!" you say. Except they're very expensive, have toxic catalysts in them, and have a very finite lifetime unless you use very, very clean water. Distilled/deionized water takes a lot of energy to produce...
Fuel cells do not have toxic catalysts in them, they have platinum, which is just about as non-toxic as a material can get. Though they are expensive and short lived.
The idea behind hydrogen is that it can be implemented now, and is compatible with existing infrastructure. Automobiles and power-plants that exist now can be converted to use hydrogen. Hydrogen can be produced using conventional energy inputs, but can also be produced using many other inputs. So the advantage is versatility, and the potential to operate industry without producing CO2. Of course, it's not ready for prime time yet.
Parent
Re:Oy, the usual hydrogen myths (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're being pedantic about it, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that we are currently aware of to generate electricity from ANY SOURCE without leaving toxic byproducts. Yes, I'm including solar and wind in that.
Who cares if it creates toxic byproducts? As long as we're not pumping them into the atmosphere, I'm okay with that.
Re:Oy, the usual hydrogen myths (Score:3, Informative)
I agree with most of your post, but...
Not at all. Electrolysis is fairly efficient and up into the 90% range for some processes such as alkaline electrolysis. I think you mean the efficiency loss of getting electricity in the first place.
Who cares, a catalyst is not consumed by a reaction. It stays in the reactor, and even if it is toxic we will not have it in our gas tanks. Anyway I am not aware of so terribly toxic catalysts.
The best part (Score:2)
(give or take a few neutrons, anyhow)
Are the spheres recycleable? (Score:2)
Too complicated (Score:5, Interesting)
Forget hydrogen. There is an abundance of alternatives out there already that can utilize the current infrastructure and car fleet with little or no cost, like ethanol and SVO and RME and so on. My personal fav would be hydrogen peroxide, but then again I am just a geek.
Governments and universities and car manufacturers like to speak of big, expensive and complex system changes because
1 - they won't happen. Keeps the oligopoly happy.
2 - they make politicians look smart and progressive.
2 - they require aeons of scientific funding to universities and such.
3 - they require us to purchase a new car from the manufacturers.
Thus, simple infrastructure changes such as using ethanol or RME aren't favoured because they are cheap and simple and only benefit us, the plebs.
Health risks? (Score:4, Insightful)
Lots of promise but all the negatives are curiously missing. This sounds more fantasy than real, the old "patent the idea" and then try to make it work.
Dear article submitter, (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I wonder... (Score:2)
Re:How Safe are These Glass Balls? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:H2 in balls doesn't make it not a boondoggle (Score:3, Insightful)
"hey, wait a minute, why are we spending billions of taxpayer dollars on a technology which will never work in the marketplace, which no one will ever use outside of experimental vehicles?"
Well, it's a great way to LOOK like you are doing something whilst being sure that nothing actually changes. After all, one of the few reasons to use hydrogen is the high energy density per unit mass - binding it to a heavy metal such as palladium removes even this advantage. I strongly suspect that it would be more
Re:How many kg of hydrogen per kg of palladium? (Score:3, Funny)
1. Setup fake gas station.
2. Substitute hydrogen gas pump for vacuum cleaner.
3. Profit!
probably not (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Palladium's current price is... (Score:5, Interesting)
At a V/V ratio of 1:900, every cm3 of palladium can absorb 900 cm3 of hydrogen.
Density of palladium? 12.023 g/cm3 [wikipedia.org]
Density of hydrogen? 0.08988 g/L = 0.00008988g/cm3. [wikipedia.org]
Therefore 1 g of palladium can absorb 0.006728 g of hydrogen. This is around 150:1, much, much worse than the 1:1 W/W ratio used in the parent calculation. This means that instead of every car needing $250,000 worth of hydrogen-saturated palladium to equal 20 gallons of gasoline, it's more like $37,500,000 worth.
Thanks, Anonymous Coward! You're good for something after all!
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