Nanoparticles Could Make Hydrogen Cheaper Than Gasoline

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to EE Times, a California-based company called QuantumSphere has developed nanoparticles that could make hydrogen cheaper than gasoline. The company says its reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings can boost the efficiency of electrolysis (the technique that generates hydrogen from water) to 85% today, exceeding the Department of Energy's goal for 2010 by 10%. The company says its process could be improved to reach an efficiency of 96% in a few years. The most interesting part of the story is that the existing gas stations would not need to be modified to distribute hydrogen. With these nanoparticle coatings, car owners could make their own hydrogen, either in their garage or even when driving."

Need those

[stoolpigeon (454276)]

What do you think the odds are on getting some of this stuff for my hydrogen car [amazon.com] kit?

Re:Need those

[Bartab (233395)]

Exactly as likely as you having an unfortunate accident, because you're a crazy conspiracy nutcase.

Why can't Exxon/Shell sell hydrogen?

[hackingbear (988354)]

No to speak for any of those companies, but if this or other technologies are as good as they claimed to be and if Exxon/Shell/big-oil buy the technology, why would they shelf it in the basement of their lawyer's office? These are just for-profit companies. As such, they don't really care what they sell. If shits can power cars better/cheaper than gasoline, they will sell the shits because they have a competitive advantages compared to others in their business. Why would they pay the Saudi emirates if they can just monopolize the production of energy at home?

Re:Why can't Exxon/Shell sell hydrogen?

[magarity (164372)]

why would they shelf it in the basement of their lawyer's office?
 
The problem is once you buy this widget to make hydrogen to power your car, you don't need to buy anything ever again except some power to run it. Bulk oil/gasoline sales to the power plant has nowhere near the margin of retail sales for cars. What would the drug companies try to do to someone who invented a miracle pill that made people immune to every possible disease and disorder forever?

Simple

[geekoid (135745)]

last question first:

"What would the drug companies try to do to someone who invented a miracle pill that made people immune to every possible disease and disorder forever?"

Sell it. Do you think the current C*0s, and board give a rats ass about 10 years down the line when they can make a billion or 3 right now?

How many companies sold key manufacturing technolgies to overseas buyers in exchange for a large chuck of cash now? A hell of a lot, that's who.

So, you own this magic widget. You can sell it for 1000 dollars 100's of millions of dollars. cha-ching, YOu RIGHT NOW make huge cash in your pocket. I don't think there so altruistic as to think "I could put a billion in my account, but we better not so some guy I don't know can makes some money in 5 years after I have left"

Not to mention the 15,000,000 new cars are bought in the US every year, and if you owned this you would be getting royalties from each of those cars for 20 years. So the company will still get some money, but the people making the decisions now get a hell of a lot of money.

Re:Simple misunderstanding

[Neuticle (255200)]

Lubricants can be done effectively without oil these days, most of the companies that sell motor oil provide at least one line of synthetic oil.

You misunderstand the meaning of "synthetic" oils. They are synthetic in that they are lab-created from stock ingredients to specific and precise formulations, rather than refined directly from crude oil as in a "traditional" oil. That said, the base stock chemicals still come from petroleum, such as an alkene, an ester, or the newer gas-to-liquid where a light-chain gas fraction is separated, hydrated and catalyticaly converted into a desired liquid.

The advantages of synthetic oils are that you can pretty much completely eliminate undesirable compounds, and you can precisely tailor chemical ratios to achieve a desired behavior. Neither of those are possible/feasible with distillation, since a "bad" compound might have a boiling point within a hair-fraction of a degree of something "good", and a lot of different "good-for-different-purposes" chemicals have very close boiling points as well.

You are right about plastics being relatively easy to make from non-petroleum carbon sources -IIRC the first plastic was made from cellulose- but there are many types of plastic that can't be made with something that simple/natural, and don't even get me started on the problems of using corn for bio-fuels and carbon stock. There are better plants, but that's what you get for letting Iowa choose the presidential candidates.

So ARCO didn't devlop commercial solar panels, eh?

[Ungrounded Lightning (62228)]

The problem is once you buy this widget to make hydrogen to power your car, you don't need to buy anything ever again except some power to run it. Bulk oil/gasoline sales to the power plant has nowhere near the margin of retail sales for cars.

That logic goes double for solar panels. Once you've bought 'em you don't even need to buy electricity from the grid (some of which also puts bucks into oil companys' pockets). So why did ARCO spend their investors' money like water to develop practical solar panels and become for a while the biggest manufacturer of them for consumers? (The division has since been sold to BP and rebranded, and has to compete with the likes of Siemens and others, but last I looked was still a major player in that market.)

Answer: They're not an OIL company, they're an ENERGY company. They understand this. If something else displaces oil they don't want it to displace THEM. Instead they want a piece of the new thing, too. They're just as happy to invest in developing and manufacturing solar panels and pocket some money when you buy them (or to run solar farms and sell electricity) as they are to invest it in exploring for oil and taking a cut when you buy that (while passing on the bulk to the people sitting on the land over the oil.) And meanwhile it gives them a power source to run some of their own remote equipment. B-)

There's a lot of money in oil. But there's little margin. Virtually all of it goes to pay for the crude feedstock and the infrastructure to extract, refine, and ship it. (That's OK. Like groceries, oil goes from purchased raw material to sold product in a short time. So the company's money gets cycled through the buy/refine/sell process several times a year, making a small profit margin add up to a good rate of return on investment.)

As with solar panels, energy companies have more incentive to develop new processes than to buy and sit on them. Because they won't be the ONLY processes to achieve results. So if company A buys process a to develop product whiz-bang, then sits on it, company B eats their lunch when it buys and develops process b and owns the market as whiz-bang displaces refined oil.

Re:So ARCO didn't devlop commercial solar panels,

[Thing 1 (178996)]

There's a lot of money in oil. But there's little margin.

For the retailer, perhaps; a friend owns a gas station and told me they make 1-3 cents per gallon. That's a razor-thin margin of 0.3% to 1%, at current prices.

However, there's a ton of margin for the oil companies. Just look at their record profits for 2007 to tell the real story: yes, the price is going up due to conflicts and reduction in supply and other factors; but their profitability tells a different story, and profits tend to tell a real story (except in unsustainable cases like Enron).

I think eliminating subsidies to the oil companies is a smart move; I read today that the House is passing it, and Democrats are trying to avoid a filibuster in the senate. Only for the top 5 oil companies, though; I'd rather see all oil subsidies eliminated, in favor of "renewable energy" subsidies (it's not really renewable, the sun will burn out someday and take the Earth with it we recently re-learned, but it's "essentially renewable").

Re:Why can't Exxon/Shell sell hydrogen?

[kesuki (321456)]

the reason is simple. coal, and atomic power (and to a small extent, hydroelectric dams and windmill farms) are the power source for 'electricity' if 96% of the electric energy is converted to hydrogen you have a very serious problem for oil companies. because the oil platforms out to sea won't run dry for another 20-50 years, and the core of their business model is seeing that this energy is used.

if too many people switch to hydrogen cars, then oil becomes worthless, because coal can be mined cheaper, etc.

not to mention that wood can be burned as efficiently as coal, although at a slightly higher price, but environmentally speaking, parts of Wisconsin could become a 'bio renewable' energy source and then only the hydrogen has to be transported, or even the electricity to make the hydrogen gets transported.

so this has a really big impact. it's easier and cheaper to make and transport electricity than it is to ship oil and gas, and if at the end of the line it's 97% efficient, then making hydrogen at the point of sale could be massively cheaper than the kind of distribution network needed to sell oil.

i doubt hydrogen fuel cells will ever be truly viable, but hydrogen combustion isn't that hard to do with modern engine design either. it's so easy that gas ICEs can be converted to hydrogen ICEs for little cost (this is why over a million vehicles ran on woodgas in world war II, when oil supplies fell far short of demand.) shipping hydrogen around and storing it in mass quantities is more expensive than 'making it at the pump' from ordinary filtered water, so this technology may finally make a hydrogen economy viable, and thus render oil obsolete.

and the biggest plus side is producing 'hot' water as the output exhaust, puts fresh water back into the freshwater cycle as humidity, that will eventually become rain, produced from cars then much of that humidity will wind up precipitating on land, as it does with forests. hydrogen combustion could restore part of the freshwater cycle that clearing forests for cropland has removed, so it's twice as good for the environment, since it produces less emissions and produces humidity. although in some regions it will be cheaper to ship hydrogen rather than produce it at the pump, and in some areas it may be necessary to desalinate water, or use 'waste water' from sewer systems.

of course, oil can still be burned to make electricity, and with increased demand for electricity driven by a hydrogen economy they would likely sell a lot of oil for use in creating electricity, however this is sold much cheaper than gasoline and doesn't use the same refining process as gasoline (there is no need to 'crack' the chemicals to get shorter chains when you're burning oil for electricity, and not making gasoline) so the oil industry will loose many jobs, and the oil wells that are currently being tapped will wind up selling far below where they were expected to sell, causing oil exploration to basically stop completely, and eventually many generations from now bio-fuels will become the cheapest form of energy when fossil fuels run out.

Re:Need those

[ArcherB (796902)]

There are many reasons BOTH competing H2 technologies can't work. Most of it boils down to safety (driving H2 bombs around town)...

As opposed to driving gasoline or alcohol bombs around town...

logistics (how do you ship highly compressed H2 since it can't be pipelined),

They ship water to the gas stations via existing pipes and convert it to hydrogen on site expelling oxygen as a byproduct

fuel cells might have good reliability, but if you crack it in a wreck, it's half the cost of the vehicle to replace,

Price should come down as production increases.

the only safe ways to store H2 gas (metal infusion) weigh too much, take 8 hours to refuel, and have less than 200 mile range.

Why not just store it in the same tank I store propane gas in? Sure it will slowly leak, but how long will it take to leak out enough to be a problem? Besides, slowly leaking tanks is a good thing for producers.

However, I do see the danger that parking a car in an enclosed space for any length of time can slowly turn your garage into a bomb.

Re:Need those

[ivan256 (17499)]

There are plenty of problems with hydrogen powered vehicles, but you really aren't hitting on them. Safety isn't the issue.

You talk about propane leaks, but propane is heavier than air and hydrogen is lighter. You aren't likely to asphyxiate from a hydrogen leak. It's not likely to accumulate in a low space and cause an explosion. Tank bursts are typically directional, and the force can be dampened; it's not like a bomb going off..

Other responders have already pointed out the inaccuracies with your pressure analysis.

You talk about the expense of distilling water, or piping distilled water around and neglect the fact that we power our vehicles with truck delivered distilled product right now. And that product is flammable during trucking and distillation.

Garages? Gasoline fumes are very explosive. That's why cars have one-way venting systems on their tanks, and boats have fume alarms. Yet we don't have gas stations and garages blowing up all the time, because we've engineered our way out of the problem.

Your alternatives are just as poorly thought out... Ethanol sounds great, but causing grain to be priced as energy won't work. There will be wars and famine (we're already well on the way in the latter department) before ethanol becomes our primary fuel. Photovoltaics are promising, but just plain not ready. They require a breakthrough large enough that we can't accurately predict how far away practicality is. You didn't mention wind, but others in the thread have... It has promise, but geographical and political concerns will keep it as a niche solution. Neither wind nor solar are transmission solutions either. They're just production. So how do you get the solar or wind power to your car anyway?

Re:Need those

[MythoBeast (54294)]

Your information about H2 technologies is amazingly flawed. They're not made out of metal, they're made out of graphite composite. They can just about drop those things out of passing airliners without cracking them, and they don't have to be "several inches thick".

Pipe water using our existing system? most cities are already at or beyond capacity of their systems today, let alone adding this load.

You're obviously not grasping the scales involved here. The US uses somewhere on the order of 150 billion gallons of gasoline each year [ca.gov]. We use three times that much water every DAY [usgs.gov]. I think that the system can handle it. Purification isn't nearly the problem you suggest it is. Existing filtration systems would be more than adequate to supply water to your typical hydrolysis system.

not only is parking a leaky tank in a garage a bad idea, so is any underground parking lot, dense parking area with low wind, or other places

This is amazingly poorly thought out. It's based on gasses that are about the same density as air. Hydrogen is much less dense than air (think twice as boyant as Helium), and doesn't require anything resembling a wind to disperse upwards. This stuff seeps through solid metal, you think a parking garage ceiling is going to stop it?

The entire logic of your argument is based on bad science and the idea that things will never improve. I don't buy it.

Re:Need those

[Sandbags (964742)]

I'm not concerned with slow leaks from the H2 that passes through the tanks naturally, that dispurses quick. I'm talking about a REAL leak, due to a bad seal or tank rupture. Even the tiniest imperfection could leak out massive volumes of H2 that are not going to be cleared by anything less than powered emergency ventalation. A repair man that forgets to follow every safty step could release a few litres of -230 degree H2 liquid into a shop (where there's likely welding or other sparks present) and this liquid explosively expands, fills all space in the shop, and contacts the spark. Boom. Goodbye shop, all inhabitants, and possible a bunch of people nearby. this WILL happen. People are careless and stupid. Propane tanks blow up all the time. H2 will just be mode deadly when it does.

Don't believe me how powerful this is? Do this for me: Go buy a small container of H2 from a local container store (I don't know how to do this, but my science proffs in college could get H2 anytime they wanted). Now, take a milk jug, a large cork with a hole in it, and a glass tube with a tapered end. Cut the bottom completely off the milk jug. put the tube in the hole in the cork and cap the jar with it (mare sure it's a tight fit). Place tape over the small remaining hole to prevent gas leaking out.

Now, mount the apparatus tube side up (open bottom of jug pointing at floor) from a clamp on a pole (so it will stay that way without you holding it, trust me, you don't want to be holding it!). You should in essence now have a big bowl, suspended upside down, with a small hole in the top. Open the valve on your H2 container and allow the gas to rise up into the bowl (since it's lighter than air, it will fill it and stay there).

Now, take the tape off the tube so that the H2 will start to rise through it. Light the escaping gas with a match (I suggest from as much distance as you can give it to be safe, a match held from a 3-6 foot long handle or longer, just in case this goes off before expected).

Now, what you will have is a small flame coming out of the glass tube. This flame operates like a torch because the vapor pressure from the H2 trying to go up is more than the air tring to go down and gas only flows one way. You should have a very feint blue flame here. This may burn for 15-90 seconds depending on how well the milk jug got filled, and how small your tube is.

After a minute or so, the H2 remaining in the milk jug will start to lessen, and air pressure above and below the tank will eventually equallize, allowing the flame to go down the tube and contact the remaning, ambient room pressure gas in the milk jug. BOOM!

trust me: If you do this indoors, say in a large classroom lab in a school, you'll have security personell and panicked people running from all directions, since this small amount of H2 gas, trapped in a gallon of airspace at static room pressure will generate a fireball that will shake the windows and ring eardrumbs.

Immagine now 3,000 times this much H2 in an underground parking area that has just rapidly escaped a leaking car's tank....

I can also image far darker options: Imagine the gree an arab suicide bomber will get when he's handed the keys from a Hertz employee to a portable H2 bomb for his $35 a day plus $300 credit hold... All he needs is a commonly available industrial shaped charge (from a construction yard) and he can take out a bridge or building. If he's really good, he can make some C4 himself from stuff at the grocery store.

Re:Need those

[Bryansix (761547)]

I don't care if H2 is FREE to make. The general public will never be driving H2 cars around.

You sound so sure so let's look at your statements

There are many reasons BOTH competing H2 technologies can't work. Most of it boils down to safety (driving H2 bombs around town), logistics (how do you ship highly compressed H2 since it can't be pipelined), fuel cells might have good reliability, but if you crack it in a wreck, it's half the cost of the vehicle to replace, the only safe ways to store H2 gas (metal infusion) weigh too much, take 8 hours to refuel, and have less than 200 mile range.

Wow, just wow. You know what else is dangerous to drive around with? Yep, a tank full of gasoline. I have driven a Hydrogen powered card. Have you? The logistics is the simplist to figure out. First off you don't pipe it, you make it at the refuling station from water. Next, if the fuel cell is half the price of the car now so what. It will come down, plus most cars in wrecks nowadays get totaled anyways so big whoop.

We'll have full electric cars, air powered cars, and a full ethanol industry hopping long before they solve the safety, vehicle weight/efficieny/range problems, costs, and other very big negatives surrounding H2.

Like I said I drove a Hydrogen Car. Honda released the FCX Clarity in Southern California. It's on the road already. All the major manufacturers have working prototype vehicles some using Hydroden Hybrid technology.

the ONLY thing H2 has going for it it it burns 100% clean. So do air poewred cars and battery powered cars, and the energy used to fill the tank with all 3 can be just as clean, safer, cheaper, and less of a logistics challenge.

Right but the point of using Hydrogen is for range and Hydrogen will become cheaper. Also, the Hydrogen doesn't burn in a fuel cell.

Re:Need those

[wximagery95 (993253)]

I don't know. Shipping hydrogen probably isn't all the more dangerous than ethanol. Ehtanol is some nasty sh*t in large quantities. Far more dangerous than gasoline. Obviously you can't use water on gasoline or ethanol fires, you have to use foam. Well, the foam used on gasoline fires doesn't work on grain-based ethanol fires. The ethanol flame burns right through the foam and conitnues to burn. To put out an ethanol fire you need an alchol-resistant polymer foam which is very expensive. Not many firestations are equiped to handle this sort of thing and as E85 becomes more popular, larger amount of ethanol are going to be shipped long haul.

Hydrogen on the other hand is very bouyant, disperses very quickly and won't puddle on the ground. If this article proves true and they can produce hydrogen that efficiently, shipping it is a moot point. Just produce the hydrogen on site and do away with the shipping all together.

Re:probabilities of being silenced

[fonik (776566)]

Clean energy sources like electricity? In half of the US, "electric cars" should be renamed "coal-powered cars".

What's that I smell?

[Harik (4023)]

*cough*bullshit*cough*

What's with all the science articles lately that are basically investor scams?

Re:What's that I smell?

[bikerider7 (1085357)]

What's with all the science articles lately that are basically investor scams?

This is a press release, not a science article. The EE Times last year fired most of its reporters, and now just regurgitates company press releases.

Re:What's that I smell?

[AJWM (19027)]

Hell, the press release is clearer than the EE Times piece, they'd have been better off just reprinting it.

Both are clearer than the summary, where the poster just made up the crap about "while driving".

Since the electrolysis requires a fair strong alkali in the solution (to conduct charge, pure water not being very conductive itself), it makes sense to keep that in a tank you just keep topping up with distilled water (and recapture what is created from the fuel cell if you're using fuel cells and not just burning the hydrogen). Either keep the tank in the car or in the garage, but with the latter you have to deal with users (half of whom are of below average intelligence) responsible for the hydrogen delivery system to the car...which sounds like an accident waiting to happen. Keep the whole system in the car and just plug it in, like a fancy storage battery.

Re:What's that I smell?

[KublaiKhan (522918)]

Distilleries aren't that expensive, though, and you don't -actually- need pure distilled water.

You'll just have to clean out the electrolysis chamber periodically if you don't, because all the stuff that isn't water will end up caked all over the insides. Those of you with particularly hard water will have issues.

Re:What's that I smell?

[Intron (870560)]

The reason the process works is that the nanoparticles give the electrodes a large surface area. If you don't use distilled water, minerals would quickly clog all of the nano-spaces and destroy the efficiency.

Re:What's that I smell?

[kimvette (919543)]

I presume you mean distilled and deionized water. . .

Anyway, distilled water is actually a great insulator, unless it's contaminated with salts or other ionizing compounds. Electrolysis won't work with water unless it is conductive, so there would have to be some sort of ionizing agent present. The products of electrolysis are hydrogen and oxygen, and if distilled+deionized water is added, then the amount of "mineral" left in the "fuel" tank should remain constant (presuming the tank itself is inert and sealed). What this means is that cleaning the tank by draining it and refilling it, or refilling it after a leak would require thorough cleaning with known-pure water, and refilled with a specific amount of "mineral" (be it NaCl or an acid or whatever) for optimal efficiency.

"Washing" the tank with hard water could destroy such a system for the reason you mentioned.

Re:What's that I smell?

[PalmKiller (174161)]

Oh yes, I for one prefer NaCl (table salt) over H2SO4 (Sulfuric Acid) cause I like making Clorine Gas with Drain cleaner as by products and only 1 hydrogen atom ... as apposed using H2S04 that produces twice the Hydrogen and oxygen gas as by products. NOT! When will people learn, you do not want to use salt as a catalyst for making hydrogen...unless your a terrorist.

Re:What's that I smell?

[meringuoid (568297)]

What's with all the science articles lately that are basically investor scams?

This isn't necessarily a scam. The potential energy of the hydrogen gas on recombination with oxygen is claimed to be at best 96% of what it took to extract it from water in the first place. So they pass the first test: they obey the laws of thermodynamics. Which is a big plus, for a /. front-page science article.

Re:What's that I smell?

[KublaiKhan (522918)]

Which is a good thing, considering that I like to obey the laws of thermodynamics in my house.

But at any rate, the one thing that I keep wondering about is how this in-car conversion of water to hydrogen will work--as yet, it keeps looking like this is just going to be another electric car implementation or something. Where's the power to crack the water coming from? Onboard batteries? Some other power source?

Summary is incorrect

[Cedric Tsui (890887)]

The article does not say anywhere that you can produce hydrogen while driving.
My mistake (last post. Read the article and not the summary)

The article says that Kevin Maloney says "Instead of switching 170,000 gas stations over to hydrogen, using our electrodes could enable consumers to make their own hydrogen, either in the garage or right on [sic] the vehicle,"

Doesn't say 'while driving' It implies that you can supply some sort of power source, presumably plugging the car into an outlet to run the fuelcell backwards and produce hydrogen.

Re:What's that I smell?

[pilgrim23 (716938)]

This process only needs water to make the fuel right? Sounds like this is Just the complimentary package we need to accompany MY new invention:
    Dehydrated Water!
  It comes in this special little pill you see. you just stick it in any tank and add water...

Vaporware?

[Ogive17 (691899)]

Sounds like vaporware to me!

But it's a hardware problem

[jabber (13196)]

I already make my own combustible gas while I drive. I just need a motor that will work with it.

I'm confused

[PatentMagus (1083289)]

So I can make hydrogen while driving. At an efficiency of perhaps 96%. So, 100 units of energy in resulting in 96 units of energy in the form of hydrogen. Those 96 units then pwoer the car.

Why wouldn't I cut the middle step out and simply use 100% of the energy to make the wheels go round and round?

Re:I'm confused

[dmatos (232892)]

"Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car."

If he mis-read the article, then I did as well. The statement above appears to indicate that they are suggesting you create hydrogen in your car while you're driving. To do this, you'll need electricity, and you'll end up losing out, because of the laws of thermodynamics. Your interpretation is slightly different, more reasonable, and not at all indicated by the article text. I believe you are describing a situation where you go home, plug your car in, and overnight it turns distilled water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Re:I'm confused

[Sosarian (39969)]

I'm not sure why people are making this logical jump from "even when driving" to "produce all your hydrogen from driving".

Just as in a Prius you could use regenerative braking to help you create some hydrogen to help you extend your range.

I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense that way either, the added components to put that system in the car surely would cost more than a reasonably sized hydrogen tank that you could refill at home or at work or at a hydrogen station.

Problem with storage

[orclevegam (940336)]

As someone pointed out in the comments on the last hydrogen story, the problem isn't so much making the stuff as it is storing it. Hydrogen cars are a pain because it's incredibly difficult to store hydrogen in such a way that it doesn't leak out. They mention in TFA that this process is so efficient that cars could do the electrolysis on the go with a tank of distilled water, but unless it's efficient enough to be self sustaining that won't work.

Re:Problem with storage

[MenTaLguY (5483)]

If it's efficient enough to be self-sustaining (100% efficiency), you still won't have any energy left over to power the car.

I think the most practical and efficient way to store hydrogen in a usable form is to bond it with short chains of atoms. Carbon seems to be the best choice as a "carrier" since you can attach two or three hydrogen atoms to each carbon atom in the chain, and the resulting compounds are liquid or gaseous at normal temperatures. I've no idea why this technology isn't already in widespread use; it's a simple matter of organic chemistry. :)

How about this --make gasoline from the hydrogen.

[ahfoo (223186)]

Not only do you avoid all the issues of converting vehicles --a very big issue indeed-- you can also invert the normal equation and actually consume atmospheric CO2 in the process.

How bout them apples? Not only would such a technique halt the addition of CO2 into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, it would actually begin to actively reduce CO2 levels.

The chemistry is old school.
CO2 + 3H2 --> CH3OH + H2O

CH3OH is methanol.

Using catalysts, which is this company's specialty, it is possible to convert methano into gasoline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_to_gasoline [wikipedia.org]

This way you change as little as possible on the consumer automotive side and yet still move to a post-pertroleum world without any new massive automotive technology roll out. That's a freakin' huge plus right there. A lot of people genuinely love their old cars. This way they can keep their old rides forever. As much as I love clean tech, I kind of have a love affair with my old car I've rebuilt so many times and there's a lot of people like that in this world. The easier we make it for everyone to participate, the faster the impact will happen. If you just go with gasoline, the switch can happen almost overnight.

If the hydrogen production process is really as efficient as they claim, it should be quite cheap on top of the environmental and political benefits. Moreover, you could install the production facilities very near existing gas tank farms located at the edges of large metro areas thus further maximizing efficiencies that petroleum can't hope to match be eliminating the need for extensive liquid fuels transport systems.

The CO2 could be produced through simple air compression. Local gasoline would once more be a reality.

Re:Problem with storage

[orclevegam (940336)]

RTFA:

"Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car."

So instead of a tank of pressurized hydrogen gas you have a tank of distilled water in your car and it's broken down into hydrogen on demand. No need to store/transport/etc. hydrogen at all if this is really the case.

Yes, I read it, but it seems you didn't comprehend it. You need energy to perform electrolysis, which in turn releases hydrogen. If the car is powered by hydrogen, and you propose extracting it on the go via electrolysis, where is the power for the electrolysis coming from? Unless you get more energy out of the hydrogen powered engine per unit of hydrogen, then it takes to extract that hydrogen via electrolysis, then it won't work, you have an energy deficit in the system. That was my point, but you totally missed it.

Re:Problem with storage

[Sandbags (964742)]

He's right. Why waste the energy to carry the electrolysis system, the water, the tank, and all the expensive and complex equipment associated with it, not to mention the fuel cell and all, when you could just attatch the batteries directly to the motors and put in a bigger battery.

It's all well and good that this may be possible, but noone's going to buy a car that weighs 500 lbs more, costs 50% more, is the size of a ford explorer but seats only 2, and requires perfectly pure (distilled) water to run on when they can have a Chevy Volt. ...besides, granted the water, assuming we can get as much as we need, purified, and distributed this way (we already have enough of a shortage of that), the cathodes require routine replacement, something the article fails to clarify. these are expensive, have to be mined, recycled, stored, and it's not easy to echange them. I did not read the article, but my impression is this is a similar technology to using aluminum to release H2 from water using applied energy. (something /. covered a few months ago.)

Re:Problem with storage

[tilandal (1004811)]

Thats stupid. Why would you use energy to make hydrogen to make electricity in a fuel cell to run an electric motor when you could of just used that same energy to run the motor in the first place?

Bring on the Giant Insects!

[Hoi Polloi (522990)]

By releasing H2 from H2O, where do you plan to put all the O2??? We can't release that much O2 into the air!

I propose using ancient deposits of carbon to lock up excess O2. Not only will this process remove excess O2 from the atmosphere but the process if exothermic and could also be used as a source of energy. In the mean time I suggest breathing as hard as possible at all times.

Personally I look forward to an oxygen rich atmosphere and the return of our dragonfly overlords [findarticles.com].

Hydrogen in the home

[wile_e_wonka (934864)]

Excellent--now everyone will have tanks of hydrogen gas in their homes.

Is there some way I can invest in firehouses?

Where does the energy come from?

[gvc (167165)]

You can't just extract hydrogen from water. You need energy. When you're driving along, what source? An internal combustion motor? Solar panels?

Hydrogen is a method for transmission and storage of energy. It is not a source of energy. At least not until they figure out controlled fusion.

Article Summary

[kryptKnight (698857)]

Here's a two sentence summary for the people who don't read articles:

Instead of using a really good conductor to make the electrodes used for electrolysis, these people propose increasing the electrode's surface area 8,000 times by coating an ordinary steel electrode with butt loads of nanoparticles that are optimized for surface area and conductivity.

That sounds feasible to me.

Nanoparticles Could Make Hydrogen Cheaper Than Gas

[sm62704 (957197)]

Related post: Nano particles could make hydrogen cheaper than [some other very expensive commodity whose price has been driven up artificially]

I want a wind powered car! A flying wind powered car. A flying wind powered car that drives itself.

And a pony.

Even while driving?

[ProppaT (557551)]

Sounds like this one will kill two birds with one stone. Where do I sign up to get a pee tube installed in my car?

Not the end of big oil

[rossz (67331)]

Everybody giggling about this would mean the end of "Big Oil" forgets that gasoline is only one of many petroleum based products. Plastics are still going to be a huge market, for example. The oil companies still won't like it, as their profits will no doubt go down. On the plus side, the profits for terrorist funders (Saudi Arabia) would go down, too.

"Right in your car..." using WHAT as energy?

[dpbsmith (263124)]

The article says "Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car."

That's a completely baffling statement to me. So baffling as to trigger my BS detector.

Presumably the point of producing it in the car is to avoid the need to store the gaseous hydrogen. But electrolysing hydrogen requires energy--the hydrogen is not a source of energy so much as it is a storage medium for energy. So where would that energy come from?

From a gasoline-powered generator in your car? Or what?

Sounds like a smooth-talking snake-oil salesman who's answer to everything is "yes, we've solved that problem too."

 

Makes no sense, until you check the link

[Geoffrey.landis (926948)]

The article as written makes no sense. You need energy to electrolyze the water to produce hydrogen, so you can't just carry a tank of water in your car instead of a tank of hydrogen; you still need to carry around energy in some form.

The commentary on the original article, though, links to the the press release [qsinano.com] which clarifies it. The application they're talking about is a plug-in rechargable car. When you're at home, you plug it in, the car electrolyzes water to produce hydrogen, and then, when you unplug it, you run the car on the hydrogen.

The application, then, doesn't address the problem of how to store hydrogen, only the problem of how to produce it.

! Perpetual Motion

[skelly33 (891182)]

There's some criticism as to the notion that hydrogen could be created right on board a moving vehicle represents perpetual motion. It doesn't. Those critics are just jumping to conclusions. The implication is that the coating supposedly improves electrolysis efficiency to such a degree that hydrogen could be created with a small enough on-board system on-demand. With today's elecrolyzers, to make enough hydrogen on-demand to run a vehicle, the hydrogen generation gear would be bigger than the vehicle, so efficiency improvement translates to size reduction which makes this approach plausible. The PEM fuel cell went through similar size reduction before it was ready for passenger vehicle use. Anyway, it means you would have to have a power supply such as a rechargeable battery to run the electrolyzer on. I did not take from the story that they were claiming a system where: 1) water + power in, 2)hydrogen out, 3) hydrogen in, 4) power out, repeat for a water-fueled system. It needs power.

Now, why would you want to do this instead of simply use the battery for electric drive? Well, one could make the argument that converting standard hyrdocarbon fuels from the pump to hydrogen ON the vehicle eliminates the need for fueling infrastructure change which is a MAJOR barrier to the widespread adoption of a "hydrogen economy". With hydrogen on the vehicle it could be used to power a fuel cell for electric drive or some other combustion engine such as BMW's multi-fuel hydrogen car. "Just add power" (solar? plug-in? other?) and if it's all done just right, what you get is more efficient fuel combustion with lower emissions than you would have gotten from burning the gasoline straight. That model I think could be viewed as a "stepping stone" towards conversion much like today's hybrid cars are regarded as a stepping stone towards all electric.

Re:

[orclevegam (940336)]

Why post articles like this? It's just an advertisement for a non-existent technology. There are tons of crap like this out there, why single this one out?

Let us know when someone actually develops something real and working, then it might be news.

TFA says it is working, and at 85% efficiency. They speculate that by 2010 they could get up to 96% efficiency. Also TFA says they partnered with one of the major battery manufacturers and will be releasing a product later this year that uses their technology.

Re:question

[Random BedHead Ed (602081)]

Dude, do you need everything spelled out? Just start your car, drive around, and after a while you'll generate enough hydrogen to start your car.