Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor Creates Clean Hydrogen 406
An anonymous reader writes "A mechanical engineer working out of the University of Delaware has come up with a way to produce hydrogen without any undesirable emissions such as carbon dioxide. The solar reactor is capable of using sunlight to increase the heat inside its cylindrical structure above 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Zinc oxide powder is then gravity fed through 15 hoppers into the ceramic interior where it converts to a zinc vapor. At that point the vapor is reacted with water separately, which in turn produces hydrogen. If the prototype gets through 6 weeks of testing at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology located in Zurich, we could see it scaled up to industrial size, producing emission-free hydrogen."
Zinc! COME BACK ZINC! (Score:4, Funny)
Great, just one more think to go wrong when pimply faced teenagers wish to live in a world without zinc.
Looks interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
But it's pointless to speculate about its utility without knowing how much hydrogen a given unit can produce, how much that unit costs, and how much maintenance it will need.
And the four giant robot arms the operator wears don't fill me with confidence.
Global Warming! (Score:5, Funny)
But if you burn hydrogen, it creates dihydrogen monoxide, a known greenhouse gas!
This is terrible!
This is a threat to public safety (Score:4, Funny)
We here at the Clean Alternative Fuels Committee see this as just too dangerous to allow and plead to the US Government to outlaw this potentially dangerous technology. We simply can not trust the public with the ability to produce Hydrogen which could lead to the creation of Mini-H bombs. We propose the advancement of existing Hybrid technology as the clean energy alternative for a successful future and is wholeheartedly endorsed by our Charter Members: Chevron, Exxon-Mobile and Shell.
Re:And what about that ZnO? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And what about that ZnO? (Score:5, Funny)
You mean if we get rid of them like the Canadians plan to do? Won't that inflate the price of our thoughts by 500%? Egads! Intellectual property will be too expensive for everyone.
Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen (Score:4, Funny)
.. with zink oxide...making zink vapor...that zink vapor....supply of Zink Oxide again.
Are you German, perhaps?
Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen (Score:4, Funny)
Hydrogen stored under pressure has a considerably lower energy density compared to hydrocarbons that we use. Hydrogen is great when you look at the energy by weight, but if a tank is sitting in the back of a car, it doesn't matter whether it weighs an extra twenty kilos, what matters is how far a tank can make a car drive.
Well... one can always mix hydrogen with some carbon to store it, can't one now?
(ducks)
Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen (Score:4, Funny)
The biggest hurdle would seem to be infrastructure. It's catch 22, mass production and distribution of H2 requires a H2 market to sell to, and vica-versa. Petrol did not really have this problem, the first generation of car owners bought their fuel in cans from the local pharmacy.
Hell, that's an idea! Let's sell H2 canisters at pharmacies.
(ducks)
Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen (Score:5, Funny)
No, the obvious, cheap, easy way to store hydrogen is to mix it with oxygen. It makes a really stable compound which we could truck around, or send places in pipes.
Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen (Score:5, Funny)