Hydrogen Stored in Safe High Density Pellets 889
sunbeam60 writes "A group of scientists are going to present their breakthrough in hydrogen storage this Wednesday. In contrast to previous storage mechanisms, this method binds hydrogen to a pellet which is completely safe to handle at room temperature. While bound in this medium no hydrogen loss occurs, enabling hydrogen to be stored cheaply for indefinite periods. When needed, the extraction of hydrogen is relatively simple. The pellets exceed all criteria set by the US Department of Energy for 2015, enabling a car to drive more than 500 km on a 50 L tank (13 MJ/l)"
Hold on, more info in the summary than the article (Score:5, Informative)
There seems to be information in the summary that is not substantiated in the referenced article:
While bound in this medium no hydrogen loss occurs, enabling hydrogen to be stored cheaply for indefinite periods.
The article referenced mentions nothing regarding hydrogen loss (or lack therof).
When needed, the extraction of hydrogen is relatively simple.
Is it? Again, nothing in the article about the extraction process.
So where did the submitter get this extra data? If this data is correct, we'd appreciate a link.
If, however, this detail in the summary is unsubstantiated, we'd appreciate less speculation in the future.
Re:Proprietary technology. (Score:3, Informative)
The energy density of these pellets is 13 Mj/l (compared to gasoline's 34.6 Mj/l).
Tell me: what is the energy density of water?
Re:Hold on, more info in the summary than the arti (Score:5, Informative)
Better article (Score:3, Informative)
The google translation is available at http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr
This is an interesting storage solution but to really evaluate this we need to know more about the process to extract hydrogen and the waste products involved and their potential re-uses.
Re:How does it come out? (Score:5, Informative)
The linked article calls the stuff "AMMINEX" which sounds like yet another ammonia hydrogen storage [google.com] scheme. I won't comment on their implementation but others have failed here.
The next problem facing hydrogen as an energy carrier (NOTE - never use the term "energy source" when referring to hydrogen because it only carries energy that has to come from somewhere else) is the fuel cell, which requires costly noble metal catalysts (i.e. - platinum). The whole electrolysis process is highly alkaline so conventional metals are quickly fouled.
Background info..... (Score:4, Informative)
http://lww.kt.dtu.dk/pdf_publications/department/
Not much there but adds a bit more ligitimacy to the claims. Its a university annual report from the Technical University of Denmark, see pages 24-26.
Re:Using Hydrogen to power your car (Score:4, Informative)
By comparison the post office runs several propane powered vehicles around the city here. These poor performing vehicles run on a fuel with an energy density of 7.5 kwh/liter.
Alternative danish news sources (Score:1, Informative)
I don't know where he found the information but at this time it's cirulating the danish press as this was developed by DTU (Danish Technical University). This was the story i submited to slashdot just a few minutes ago. All of the below articles are in danish:
A research team at DTU [www.dtu.dk] (Danish technical University) have solved the number one obstacle in making hydrogen fuel feasable in the automotive industry namely how to store hydrogen. Their solution [www.dtu.dk] is to chemicaly bind hydrogen in the form of amonium to salt in the shape of a small asprin pill. According to the research team an ordinary 50 liter fuel tank would allow a hydrogen fueled car to drive 500km using this technology and the pills cannot be ignited in this form as the image in the above article illustrates. According to this article [www.jp.dk] the technology will be revealed tomorrow at a large press conference in Chicago and in the science journal of Materials Chemistry.
Re:Dubious? (Score:2, Informative)
Some information (Score:5, Informative)
Rough translation of most important part (Score:5, Informative)
The ammonia is made catalytical by combining atmospheric Hydrogen and Nitrogen.
It can be stored as long as necessary.
Only when the ammonia is passed through a catalyst the Hydrogen is released.
When the pellet is emptied, it just needs a new shot of Ammonia to be ready again.
(I believe that heating is necessary in the catalyst)
Stuff Aminex! (Score:2, Informative)
Carbon nanotube technology looks far more promising:
http://www.e-sources.com/hydrogen/storage.html [e-sources.com]I've found some more info (Score:2, Informative)
Google Translate to the rescue: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr
Terrible article, but.. (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.dtu.dk/Nyheder/Pressemeddelelser/DTU-f
Here's a rough translation. Pardon any errors:
DTU scientists invent hydrogen pellet
Scientists at the Danish Technical University has figured out a technology that can allow civilization to be independent of fossile fuels: A hydrogen pellet which securely and cheaply can store hydrogen with an unseen efficiency.
With the Danish hydrogen pellet, everyone can take advantage of the environmentally friendly energy of hydrogen.
Hydrogen can deliver a completely pollution free energi, but since it's a form of gas, it takes up too much space and is a firehazard. Efficient and safe storage of hydrogen is a problem that scientists have attempted to solve over the past 25 years. Now we have a solution. Scientists at DTU have managed to make a hydrogen pellet, which makes it possible to transport and store hydrogen, completely without the risks normally attributed with hydrogen.
"Should one drive a car 600 km with hydrogen in gas form, it would require a gas tank the size of 9 cars. With our solution, it's possible to store the same amount of hydrogen in a normal gas tank", explains Claus Hviid Christensen, professor at the Chemical Institute at DTU.
DTU's hydrogen pellet is completely safe and very economic. Thereby it's different from other technologies. You can litterall carry it in your pocket without any safety devices. The reason is that the pellet consists only of ammonium absorbed in ordinary seasalt. Ammonium is stored catalytically by the combination of the hydrogen and nitrogen, and DTU's hydrogen pellet binds large amounts of hydrogen this way.
The pellet can store hydrogen for as long as it takes. First when the ammonium is directed through a catalyst, the hydrogen is released. When the hydrogen is gone, you can give it another shot of ammonium and it's ready for use again.
The technology is a step towards a society where we are independent on oil. This is the message from Jens Nørskov, centre leader at NANO-DTU. He as well as Claus Hviid Christensen, Tue Johannessen, Ulrik Quaade and Rasmus Zink Sørensen are the five scientists behind the hydrogen pellet. The advantages of using hydrogen as a fuel is many: For example, it's CO2 neutral and can be made by wind power.
"We have achieved a very important goal in a process towards a hydrogen based society; namely to achieve a very cheap base technology. Under all circumstances, we can see today that fossile fuels will not last and without fuel, there's no reason to discuss anything else. Without energy, no modern society can function, because this is what civilization is based on," says Jens Nørskov.
In cooperation with DTU and SeeD Capital, researchers have created the company Amminex A/S, which will be the place to develop and commercialize the technologi.
PICTURE CAPTION:
Director of the new hydrogen pellet company Amminex A/S, Tue Johannesen, is attempting without success to ignite the hydrogen pellet. The pellet is the world's safest way to store hydrogen in, today.
Re:Well, wait until Wednesday's report (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.dtu.dk/English/About_DTU/News.aspx?gui
Nyh
Re:Other measurements (Score:5, Informative)
That 10 liters per 100 km (23.5 MPG) is gasoline talk. US DOE wants to store hydrogen into a 50 liter (13.2 gal) tank and be able to drive 500 km (310.7 mi). What makes that challenging is the low density of hydrogen, only about 89 g/m3 (0.089 oz/ft3). High pressure tanks are either very heavy or very expensive, and chemical storage solutions always include reforming equipment or other processing steps to get hydrogen out.
Therefore, we should look at the energy content of the hydrogen stored into that 50 liter tank. With what Amminex claims, they can reach an energy content of 486 MJ (461 kBTU), versus 2150 MJ (2.0 MBTU) of 50 liters of gasoline. 486 MJ equals to 11.3 liters (3.0 gal) of gasoline equivalent. That makes 2.3 liters per 100 km (104.1 MPG!)
How is that possible? Fuel cells, electrical engines and braking energy harvesting. Fuel cells are electrochemical energy conversion devices that are free from the Carnot engine efficiency limitations, and furthermore, their efficiency increases on partial load. Operating a heat engine on partial load is detrimental to efficiency.
Re:Some information (Score:3, Informative)
What's that in American? (Score:5, Informative)
That would be 311 miles in 13.2 gallons.
Hah! I spit on your so-called metric system.
More information... (Score:5, Informative)
I've found another (from June) article here [bulletins-...niques.com] (in french). For a long time people have been talking about ammonia as hydrogen storage, as it's quite high in energy density and is a relatively safe liquid. However, there are issues with gas expansion, pressurization and toxic fumes.
Essentially, these pellets are an ammonia storage system that stores ammonia nearly as efficiently (by weight and volume) as liquid ammonia. The above article says that they are relatively cheap to produce (initial costs of 1 euro/kilogram of material, which translates to roughly $12.88 USD for the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline). The article clearly states that the process is reversible, thus the base materials must be reusable. It does not state what the cost is of 'recharging' the pellets. The recharge cost would have to be at least 4x cheaper than production in order for it to be competitive with gasoline. The extraction technique is listed as 'desorption', which I imagine just means heating the pellets up and siphoning the extracted gas off. As for temperatures, and desorption rates, nothing is cited.
It doesn't state specifically how the reaction runs, but that ammonia is extracted from the pellets, which is then run through a standard ammonia converter (at temperatures of around 350 degrees celsius) to extract the hydrogen. It says the reaction runs quickly, so it's able to provide the hydrogen quickly enough.
The Amminex website has slightly more information available by clicking on the "ammonia storage" page, because it's the exact same technology as the hydrogen storage (link here [amminex.com])
Re:How does it come out? (Score:5, Informative)
Scientific American (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Tragically... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about the economics? (Score:3, Informative)
For all of everybody's bitching about oil companies, here are some net profit rates for a couple of oil companies:
Exxon-Mobil [msn.com]: 10% net profit
Chevron [msn.com]: 8% net profit
BP [msn.com]: 5% net profit
Of course, as a consumer, I'd prefer that they make zero profit and lower the price, but these rates of profit don't seem outrageous to me.
Re:How does it come out? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How does it come out? (Score:3, Informative)
With hydrogen we are talking about chemical energy. It's kind of like potential energy except that the potential is the element's potential to form chemical bonds with other elements. With raw Hydrogen, the potential is H's potential to grab a buddy and form a bond with O to make H20. Doing this releases energy in the form of heat which will drive the motors.
Now the energy carrier part: To reverse the process you have to insert energy into the water to get the H2 to break it's bond with the oxygen. This energy has to come from somewhere.... THAT is really the energy source. (well, sort of.... oil is just an energy carrier as well.... the sun was the original energy source in that regard).
And the problem: You lose energy in the form of heat at every step in this transaction. When we are burning fossil fuels, we are fortunate that the main energy loss happened without us millions of years ago. So to us, it's a net energy gain. (even though it's a terrible, terrible waste of energy that hit the earth millions of years ago... i forget the numbers, but one gallon of gas has an obscene amount solar energy that went into it). With hydrogen, we have to put the energy in right now. Not really practical unless we can come up with a great source of energy. (nukes are the only feasable way... but good luck with that)
Re:Perhaps not... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How does it come out? (Score:3, Informative)
Consider the oil sands in Alberta. (They give Canada the second largest proven oil reserves in the world.) It takes a huge amount of energy to extract the oil from these sands (through boiling). It costs [energybulletin.net] about $10 to extract a barrel of oil from them, compared with $2 to pump it in Saudi Arabia. So here I've given two examples that suggest the cost of getting oil, and I haven't even mentioned transportation and refining.
Re:How does it come out? (Score:3, Informative)
First of all, water is the major greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Equilibrium is kept in the atmosphere by precipitation of the vapor into rain, snow, etc. Water added through evaporation or fuel burning goes through the same cycle.
Second, in terms of energy efficiency, the power stations are FAR more efficient than automobiles. If we're able to tap the energy from those stations for use in vehicles through electric cars, hydrogen cells, or some other method, it will be better than the localized burning of fuels in cars and trucks.
You might also want to check into your CO2 sources; according to the DoE, about 56% of the CO2 generated by the US comes from coal and natural gas, and last time I checked, there weren't too many people lining up their cars for lumps of carbon. Petroleum counts for almost all of the rest, and most of that is used in transportation.
Thirdly, you clearly are years out of date on population growth. While energy growth is continuing to grow, population growth is slowing, and significantly so. Ten years ago, a population of twelve billion was predicted for 2050, with little end in sight. Now the world population is expected to peak at about nine billion between 2050 and 2070, and then to start falling. In 1990, the total fertility rate of the world was 3.4 children per woman; today it's about 2.6, and in 2025 it's predicted to decline to 2.3. Measure that against a replacement rate of about 2.1. Japan and several European nations are already facing potential crises over their population rates, which have reached replacement rate or lower, and are continuing to drop.
You should check your own facts before you go criticizing others.
Re:Maybe 80 years ago... (Score:2, Informative)
Err, it did stop Nuclear power growth. The cost of dealing with Nuclear waste is so high that the US hasn't built a new nuclear power plant in what, almost 20 years now? I think we have just 'restarted' construction of 3 or 4 plants that had never been completed back in the 70's though.
As for ethanol... it's a complete waste. If organic fuel is your goal, soy diesle is a much better route. Corn requires HUGE amounts of nitrogen rich fertalizer. Which means using chemical (petrolium) based fertalizers. Corn has plenty of other issues to, but I'm no agronomist. Soy on the other hand, produces its own nitrogen, is significantly more hardy, and can also be used as livestock feed after the oil has been removed. Diesle engines are also more efficient, and with current emission control standards, less polluting the their gas equivilants.
-Rick
Re:How does it come out? (Score:2, Informative)
While you're at it, you can add the same factor for converting earth oil/coal into fossil fuel for the power plant. It's a wash.
Industrial-scale processes for this sort of things are more efficient than automobile-scale processes.
For example, in the largest diesel engines (as used in tankers etc.) efficiency can reach around 60%.
Photosynthesis is highly inefficient (Score:3, Informative)
Far from it. Photosyntheis is only 3-6% efficient.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/w7241e/w7241e05.htm [fao.org]
By contrast, commercially available solar cells are between 10 and 35% efficient.
Re:How does it come out? (Score:3, Informative)
What health costs? Nuclear power in the US has killed how many people? I think 3, if you cound the SL-1 accident, which wasn't a civilian plant. Certainly under 100. In contrast, something like 50-100,000 people die each year in the US alone because of air pollution. A lot of that's due to indoor pollution, but much of it's because of all the crud fossil fuel plants spit into the air.
Take all the nuclear waste, and dump it right to the bottom of an abyssal trench in plain steel drums, and the health costs would be vastly lower than those caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Per megawatt-hour, nuclear plants release *much* less radioactive material into the atmosphere than coal plants do; those spit out plenty of thorium and uranium, and that's not even mentioning the heavy metals and particulates that cause real damage and kill real people.
The fear about nuclear waste is nothing more than FUD. Volumetrically, we're talking about incredibly tiny quantities of waste. It's really a non-issue, except for the political hysteria.
Solar/wind/hydroelectric? Not practical for generating all the electricity we use right now, let alone all we'd need to use if we want a hydrogen economy. If you want to cut out burning coal and gas, nuclear is the only option.
Re:How does it come out? (Score:5, Informative)
Right now, there are coal plants around the globe that are merrily spewing radioisotopes into the atmosphere; some coal has levels of uranium of 10ppm, and even higher levels of thorium, and just the amount of uranium the US has spat into the atmosphere since the 1930s could have, if fissioned instead, provided the entire present-day electrical demand of the entire United Kingdom for centuries. Seriously, I'm not joking. Since 1937, in the course of burning coal the US has dumped 145,000 tons of uranium into the atmosphere. That's 10,440 tons of U-235, which fissions to produce about 17.6 kilotons/kilogram. Fission all that, you get 193 petawatt-hours, which is the current electrical demand of the entire UK for 500 years.
That's real radioactivity, that causes real illness and kills real people. So why isn't burning coal prohibitively expensive? Why doesn't the 'disposal and maintanance of the radioactive waste' drive the cost up?
The reason is because the regulations for dealing with radioactive waste are a joke. They've got little to do with real risks, real costs, and a lot more to do with public fear and hysteria over anything that has the word 'nuclear' in it, which is why if you twist your knee playing football you go to get an MRI scan instead of an NMR scan. If a human being were considered under the regulations dicating the disposal of radioactive waste, then simply the naturally-occurring radioisotopes in the body would make cremation or burial in wooden coffins illegal. But nobody's bothered by that, either because they don't know that all organic matter is radioactive, or because they think that somehow K-40 in organic tissue is different from K-40 that's sitting in a used fuel rod.
Blaming public ignorance, fear, uncertainty, and doubt for the high cost of nuclear power does the best technology we have available to us if we want to maintain our standard of living *and* clean up the planet a great disservice. Right now, every kilowatt-hour we get from burning coal dumps 2.3 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere, so for a country like the UK which gets 74% of its power from burning coal, that's 614 billion pounds of CO2, every year.
There is no way in hell the real costs of handling nuclear waste even come close to the costs of all that pollution. No. Fucking. Way. In contrast, a typical, 1000-MW nuclear plant produces something like 20 tons of high-level waste per year; that's under 50 *pounds* of waste per megawatt of plant capacity, and since it's so dense, volumetrically that's practically negligible.
Much of the high cost of nuclear waste is directly due to stupid-assed government regulations that are based upon the fact that PWRs in this country are a byproduct of nuclear weapons programs. They *prohibit* reactor designs that include fuel recycling, using additional reactor stages to burn the 'waste' produced by earlier stages. Don't want to deal with the waste for 10,000 years? Fine. Dump it into a seafloor subduction zone, by the time it sees the light of day again it won't be any more radioactive than any other molten material that spews forth from the Earth on a daily basis.
Considering that much of high level radioactive waste has a half-life of 12,000 years
If it has a half-life that long, it's not high-level.
Re:How does it come out? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How does it come out? (Score:3, Informative)
Of course it does. That's why people willingly pay *more* for power generated from clean sources. There are utility companies that *offer* people the chance to pay *higher* utility rates for the assurance that they'll be using windpower, and people pay that.
Currently electricity is valued much higher than chemical (gasoline) energy per kWh.
I'm certainly not aware of where you're getting *that* notion. A gallon of gas right by my house sells for $3.19 at the moment, and a gallon of gas comes out to about 33 kilowatt-hours. Electricity, on the other hand, goes for about 8 cents per kilowatt-hour, so 33 kilowatt-hours comes out to only $2.64. So it's *not* valued much higher than gasoline.
If I am a power company who can sell electricity for $0.25/kWh on the retail market, why in the world would I bother converting that to hydrogen which would sell to consumers for a lot less as auto fuel.
Because you stand to profit from the sale of hydrogen. You can't just make more money by increasing the supply of electricity.
A gallon of gasoline contains about 60 kWh or energy. Say gas costs $3/gallon. Even at this relatively high gas price, you're only paying $0.05 per kWh!
You're off by a factor of two. Here [hypertextbook.com].
Just to check my figures. The figures on that page average 44.6 MJ/kg, gasoline has a density of
Granted, a lot of that cost/gallon is taxes, not the real cost of the gas, but that sort of artificial price inflation is also at work in the retail cost of electricity.
If you were to convert electricty (at $.25/kWh) to hydrogen, you would pay $15 for a gallon of gas worth of energy!
No, you wouldn't. At that price of electricity (Which is really a high figure, according to the DOE, for the year 2003 the average cost nationwide was 8.7 cents per kWh, so most power companies *can't* sell electricity for $.25/kWh. Those same DOE figures claim that the highest electricity costs in the nation are in Hawaii, at 14.47 cents/kWh. I believe that during the Enron debacle in California, prices went up to 20 cents. So, really, you're using a 'typical' value that is actually considerably higher than the worst absurdities the market has been able to generate. But moving on... ), you'd be paying $9.25.
Gallons of Hydrogen is irrelevant (Score:3, Informative)
Who cares how many gallons? Gas and Hydrogen have different energy densities, and gas is a liquid while hydrogen has no fixed volume.
Instead think of it as 311 miles on a tank of gas, or between fill-ups.
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