Nanoparticles Could Make Hydrogen Cheaper Than Gasoline 442
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."
Re:What's that I smell? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Problem with storage (Score:5, Informative)
Where does the energy come from? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Suddenly, My Arguments Against Hydrogen Disappeare (Score:2, Informative)
The problems I had with hydrogen is that electrolysis isn't efficient enough, you need expensive platinum or palladium catalysts in the fuel cells, and you either need some exotic storage/transport mechanism made of unobtainium, or you have individual users make their own hydrogen (which makes it even less efficient).
Looks like this solves most of those problems. As long as this nanoparticle catalyst is cheaper than platinum (not terribly difficult [kitco.com]), the hydrogen economy might actually have a future.
Re:What's that I smell? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Makes no sense, until you check the link (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Informative)
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:Problem with storage (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder if they include the costs to get the hydrogen out of their machine and into your car...
Re:I'm confused (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Need those (Score:5, Informative)
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:What's that I smell? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
Not Quite... (Score:3, Informative)
I agree with your overall conclusion that hydrogen cars are probably not going to happen, ever. Hydrogen is difficult to make, difficult to transport, difficult to dispense, difficult to store on vehicle, and difficult to utilize. We have not really solved any of these issues. And as you said, the only real advantage is that it burns clean (sort of, if you burn it in an ICE you will likely still have NOx issues).
Re:Need those (Score:5, Informative)
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:Article Summary (Score:3, Informative)
Replace "conductor" with catalyst. The issue isn't the conductivity of the anode and/or cathode, but the rate at which water is split into hydrogen and oxygen compared to the rate at which energy is conducted through the cell -- recognizing that excess energy conducted through the cell is ending up as waste heat somewhere or other.
The nanoparticles provide a good catalyst with a very high catalytic surface area, which apparently improves upon a excellent catalyst having a good surface area. Probably more to the point, the nanomaterials are presumptively much cheaper than the excellent catalyst (platinum, currently at >$2100/oz).
Re:Need those (Score:5, Informative)
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:Simple misunderstanding (Score:5, Informative)
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.