German Institute Develops 'Powerpaste' That Stores Hydrogen Energy At 10x the Density of a Lithium Battery (hackaday.com) 124
A German research organization has developed a magnesium-based "Powerpaste" with an energy density ten times more than current battery technology. Hackaday reports: We've been promised hydrogen-powered engines for some time now. One downside though is the need for hydrogen vehicles to have heavy high-pressure tanks. While a 700 bar tank and the accompanying fuel cell is acceptable for a city bus or a truck, it becomes problematic with smaller vehicles, especially ones such as scooters or even full-sized motorcycles. The Fraunhofer Institute wants to run smaller vehicles on magnesium hydride in a paste form that they call POWERPASTE.
The idea is that the paste effectively stores hydrogen at normal temperature and pressure. At 250C, the paste decomposes and releases its hydrogen. While your motorcycle may seem hot when parked in the sun, it isn't getting quite to 250C. Interestingly, the paste only provides half the available hydrogen. The rest is from water added start a reaction to release the hydrogen. Fraunhofer claims the energy density available is greater than that of a 700 bar tank in a conventional hydrogen system and ten times more than current battery technology.
One thing that's attractive is that the paste is easy to store and pump. A gas station, for example, could invest $20-30,000 and dispense the paste from a metal drum to meet low demand and then scale up as needed. A hydrogen pumping setup starts at about $1.2 million. Fraunhofer is building a pilot production plant that will produce about four tons of the material a year.
The idea is that the paste effectively stores hydrogen at normal temperature and pressure. At 250C, the paste decomposes and releases its hydrogen. While your motorcycle may seem hot when parked in the sun, it isn't getting quite to 250C. Interestingly, the paste only provides half the available hydrogen. The rest is from water added start a reaction to release the hydrogen. Fraunhofer claims the energy density available is greater than that of a 700 bar tank in a conventional hydrogen system and ten times more than current battery technology.
One thing that's attractive is that the paste is easy to store and pump. A gas station, for example, could invest $20-30,000 and dispense the paste from a metal drum to meet low demand and then scale up as needed. A hydrogen pumping setup starts at about $1.2 million. Fraunhofer is building a pilot production plant that will produce about four tons of the material a year.
What about the used material? (Score:5, Interesting)
One question that the article (and press release) pointedly ignore is what is to be done with the paste that has released its hydrogen and "broken down?" It's not clear whether the resulting material will still be pastelike, but any service station will necessarily have to deal with it.
Re:What about the used material? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What about the used material? (Score:5, Informative)
With the hydrogen extracted, I'd imagine you would be left with magnesium oxide [wikipedia.org]Whether this is desirable or not is left as an exercise for the reader.
Magnesium oxide makes a magnificent cement! It's what they used for the Taj Mahal.
Re:What about the used material? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What about the used material? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What about the used material? (Score:5, Funny)
I may have a zoning issue ...
Re: (Score:3)
I'm gonna need a bigger back yard!
Re:What about the used material? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, you end up with Magnesium Oxide.
MgH2 + H2O => MgO + 2H2
MgO (magnesia) can be recycled back into MgH2. Or it can be used in industrial products such as cement as a substitute for CaO (lime).
MgO is nontoxic. It is used in some antacid tablets.
Re: (Score:2)
MgO is nontoxic. It is used in some antacid tablets.
Great! I'll have a Taj Mahal in my back yard, and when I get heartburn I'll just go out and chew off a cornice.
--
.nosig
Re: (Score:2)
the whitepaper suggested that passive oxide layers were inhibiting this reaction....
Yet, previous attempts to generate hydrogen from the reaction of magnesium hydride and water in a highly dynamic and simple fashion while controlling the reaction to a degree, that an instantaneous start/stop and complete load following of the fuel cell becomes possible, have been unsuccessful. One of the reasons is the formation of passivation layers on magnesium hydride on contact with water. As Fraunhofer IFAM demonstra
Re: (Score:2)
You use something like this [walmartimages.com].
Cartridge swaps ensure easy handling. (Score:5, Informative)
"Moreover, refueling is extremely simple. Instead of heading to the filling station, riders merely have to replace an empty cartridge with a new one and then refill a tank with mains water. This can be done either at home or underway."
For a car though? (Score:2)
Instead of heading to the filling station, riders merely have to replace an empty cartridge with a new one and then refill a tank with mains water.
So how big is this cartridge for a normal passenger sized car? That doesn't sound like easy handling to me. I would prefer I just pump in the paste and water through one unified hose (could keep the streams un-crossed) then cart off waste products maybe once a month or so... car diaper sounds way better than a car cartridge and manual water filling.
Re: (Score:3)
The intent isn't for cars, but for ebikes and scooters.
For a car, compressed gas tanks are still the way and even those are too bad.
Sounds super impractical (Score:1)
The intent isn't for cars, but for ebikes and scooters.
The inconvenience of having to deal with a cartridge compared to just plugging in the eBike / Scooter overnight seems excessive...
The one use I could maybe see this being of greater practical use, is for hunting eBikes where maybe you would really need much longer range and/or carrying capacity, then you could carry spare cartridges with you and they would take up less space/be lighter than a spare eBike battery.
For rental scooters like Lime maybe it wo
Re: (Score:2)
"Just" plugging in a bike or scooter means hanging around for 30 minutes or more to get a partial charge.
Think of it as swapping a tank like a propane torch... And it has a greater range than batteries do.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sounds super impractical (Score:5, Informative)
If magically all oil cars were replaced by electric tomorrow, we couldn't use them because the current power grid would be blown by the huge draw of power to charge the cars.
In that case it's fortunate that we don't have to be worried about unrealistic magical scenarios, right? And in any case, for my own country, I did the math and the "huge draw" turned out to be a 10-15% increase. The grid load variations we currently have are already higher than this, so it's a matter of filling the demand troughs. Also, I'm not sure whether you realize (it seems that you don't) that charging batteries is the MOST energy-efficient option of all. If magically all oil cars were to be replaced with THIS stuff tomorrow, you'd be looking at MUCH more dire consequences for your energy infrastructure. Pure hydrogen alone would cost you twice as much primary energy, not to mention this peculiar mode of its distribution.
You WILL be paying a LOT more for electricity
Look at how I don't. In any case, gasoline is around five times as expensive per km around where I live, so one could easily pay twice as much for electricity and still come out ahead.
So stop with the righteous bullshit.
I didn't know that simple math was "righteous bullshit".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately thats the last resort argument of someone who hasn't thought things through and still applying 19th century paradigms
Re: (Score:2)
Taxes will come to EVs at some point when the tipping point has been passe
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hard to say as they tend to be just left if they're depleted and recharged at night... Let's face it a lime scooter isn't going to run for miles at a time.
Re:For a car though? (Score:5, Insightful)
The intent isn't for cars, but for ebikes and scooters.
Things are often repurposed beyond their original intent. From the article: "With its huge energy storage density, POWERPASTE is also an interesting option for cars, delivery vehicles and range extenders in battery-powered electric vehicles."
For a car, compressed gas tanks are still the way and even those are too bad.
Why are compressed gas tanks still the way? If, as the article says "It [the energy storage density] is substantially higher than that of a 700 bar high-pressure tank. And compared to batteries, it has ten times the energy storage density” then what exactly are the benefits of compressed gas tanks? It's not that compressed gas is easier or safer to transport; or cheaper for garages to sell; or that the infrastructure required is less complex; or that the auto-engineering is less complex. I'm curious, what compelling reasons are you seeing that support the above statement?
Whilst it remains to be seen how this actually works in real world scenarios, how the supply chain and waste cycle is managed, what the overall energy efficiency is (i.e. in creating the magnesium hydride etc.), along with a few other minor questions that come to mind (e.g. catalyst poisoning), this is the first news I've seen that make me think that hydrogen fuel cell cars are a practical and a sensible direction to be moving in.
Re: (Score:2)
For a car, compressed gas tanks are still the way and even those are too bad.
Why are compressed gas tanks still the way? If, as the article says "It [the energy storage density] is substantially higher than that of a 700 bar high-pressure tank. And compared to batteries, it has ten times the energy storage density” then what exactly are the benefits of compressed gas tanks? It's not that compressed gas is easier or safer to transport; or cheaper for garages to sell; or that the infrastructure required is less complex; or that the auto-engineering is less complex. I'm curious, what compelling reasons are you seeing that support the above statement?
Well, for one thing, this stuff has a waste product that needs recycling, so you'd need 2x the logistics as current gasoline or hydrogen distribution, and if it's a paste, I assume long pipelines are out of the question for distribution, and I don't know what state the resulting MgO is in, or how easy it would be to collect.
If it ends up requiring some kind of cartridge, you'd now have to manufacture, distribute, collect, and recycle an enormous quantity of those, too. And those can't just be pumped into a
Re: (Score:2)
Some excellent points. I agree there are huge technical, practical and logistical challenges to overcome before this could become a realistic solution for widespread use, especially considering the size of the fleet of private vehicles currently in operation.
Why are compressed gas tanks still the way?
An electric car only costs a few dollars to charge; it would cost more than that just to ship a paste cartridge round trip.
Probably / maybe. Either way, I definitely think electric cars are, for most use-cases, a better option going forward.
However, since my question concerned the viability of pressurised hydrogen vs magnesium hydride bringing battery electrics into it is a
Re: (Score:2)
Largely, as others have pointed out, there are unanswered questions about how to clear storage of the remains of the "paste".
Swapping out a small cartridge on an ebike/scooter/drone... Easy Peasy.
Bigger stuff like a car/truck? It doesn't look so simple.
Compress gas tank empty. Fill it up.
Paste tank "depleted" of useful stuff and not useful stuff needs to be reprocessed...
Yeah, that make it a no brainer to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the reply.
Largely, as others have pointed out, there are unanswered questions about how to clear storage of the remains of the "paste".
Swapping out a small cartridge on an ebike/scooter/drone... Easy Peasy.
Bigger stuff like a car/truck? It doesn't look so simple.
All true. I'm not sure I'd be making categorical statements on the basis of "there are unanswered questions" though.
Compress gas tank empty. Fill it up.
Again true. Of course there are huge infrastructure costs associated with that pump, not to mention the long term effects of hydrogen on metals (embrittlement), the issue of wastage due to difficulties in containing such a small molecule, and the dangers associated with transporting and storing such an explosive substance.
Paste tank "depleted" of useful stuff and not useful stuff needs to be reprocessed...
I'll admit the article leaves a few details out, li
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
If you are going to swap cartridges, why not just swap batteries and be done with it. All that is required is batteries in cars need to be better designed so that can quickly be swapped out by a robot at a service station in minutes. You never have to worry about replacing worn batteries, you just swap them over once a week , as well as when ever necessary and top up at home overnight at you home auto charge location, you pull up in the right position and the domestic charge station does the rest.
You pay fo
Re: (Score:2)
solar panels on the roof charge you car TAX FREE for free once you pay for the panels.
Now *that* would be a trick.
Not impossible, but 99.9% of panel owners will never be able to do that.
Re: (Score:2)
But I also hear that a day worth of charging via PV panels nets you a charge that will last for 10 miles or something around that distance.
Sure, better than nothing, but for most applications not feasible. We'd either need photovoltaics with a lot higher efficiency and or some lightweight foldable photovoltaics that ca
Re: (Score:2)
I am sympathetic to the concept, but there are significant real world challenges to doing this. EVs tend to get the batteries as low as possible, to keep the center of gravity low. The longer the range, the bigger the battery pack, and the more likely it is to have oddly shaped components that fit in little nooks and crannies. Easily swappable batteries probably implies a small number of common size battery modules, meaning either range suffers or the battery compartment intrudes into the passenger/cargo
Re: (Score:2)
Because the energy density is ten times that of a battery. The thing you swap would have one tenth the volume of an equivalent battery, or alternatively, ten times the range for the same volume.
Re:Cartridge swaps ensure easy handling. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
More than that. Electric motors are > 90% efficient, plus the benefit of regenerative braking. Hydrogen fuel cells are somewhere around 50% efficient, and ICE engines ~ 30%.
Re: (Score:2)
More than that. Electric motors are > 90% efficient, plus the benefit of regenerative braking. Hydrogen fuel cells are somewhere around 50% efficient, and ICE engines ~ 30%.
Fuel cell cars also have electric motors and small batteries for regenerative braking. The fuel cell should be compared to the battery and not the electric motor.
Re: (Score:2)
So personally while this may potentially be better than compressed hydrogen from a convenience / transportation perspective, it's still a sucky alte
Re: (Score:2)
What? If you want to know how much energy you need to carry around with you, you need to consider the efficiency of the whole system. The electric motor is close enough to 100% efficient I ignored it. You can multiply the fuel cell number by 0.95 if you really want to, but the difference is well within the "~" and "somewhere around" that I put in.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't see why anyone would prefer this over a battery. They are talking about scooters, the range is already good enough that you wouldn't want to exceed it on that kind of vehicle. It's so much less convenient too, you can't just charge it up at home or your friend's house.
Re: (Score:1)
reading the entire summary is hard work when you can just read the title and start commenting
Re: (Score:2)
Because you add additional water to begin the reaction.
Similar process patent by company ten years ago (Score:5, Informative)
An israeli company patents a process of feeding magnesium wire into a water tank to release hydrogen for automotive use. The fueling process would consist of driging to a gas station to put in a new wire spool and recover the oxidized magnesium from the water tank. Then electrical processing would recover the solid magnesium for recylcing.
Re: (Score:2)
Comment on TFA mentions a number of scary caveats. Extremely hazardous, needs to be hermetically sealed, waste is caustic and destroys pumping apparatus, recovery of waste requires fossil fuel.. Otherwise, great! Oh, umm what happens if the tank exceeds 250C in a fire? A lot of energy in a tiny space..
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like the hazards of gasoline.
All of that seems to be hyperbole with scary sounding words, except the "requires fossil fuel" part, which is just wrong. Refining magnesium oxides can be done thermally (you could still use an electric furnace) but electrolysis is more efficient.
Re: (Score:2)
So it's way better than gasoline in all regards. Got it.
Re: (Score:2)
from the article...
Moreover, refueling is extremely simple. Instead of heading to the filling station, riders merely have to replace an empty cartridge with a new one and then refill a tank with mains water. This can be done either at home or underway.
here is a youtube video that explains the equation of magnesium hydride plus water [youtube.com]. It appears that your left over reactants are magnesium and oxygen, with the ester additives
I did find a link to the whitepaper for Powerpaste by Fraunhofer IFAM [fraunhofer.de] you can tr
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The primary ingredient combusts when exposed to humid air, don't try to put it out with water!
I guess you don't have mag-alloy wheels on your car? Or petrol in the tank? There's several reasons to not put out a car fire with water.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Spontaneously, no. But a car accident quite often leads to combustion, especially if a fuel tank / line is ruptured making that point moot.
And no, the primary ingredient reacts with water. It doesn't react with CO2 or dry powder, both extinguisher types carried on fire engines. Incidentally both used on cars already *because petrol fires and magnesium alloys do not react well to being put out with water*.
This is fine. You're looking for problems not realising they have already been solved.
Re: (Score:2)
The primary ingredient combusts when exposed to humid air, don't try to put it out with water!
I don't know where you got this information. Wikipedia says it's commonly used as a fire retardant. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The primary ingredient combusts when exposed to humid air, don't try to put it out with water!
Although you shouldn't use water a lot of metal hydrides and other similar water reactive and pyrophoric stuff will extinguish if you drown them with enough water. Although the official method for dealing with it is likely not water it will often still work. For small scale it probably makes more sense to deal with it with water and seen things like that dumped in lab sinks before now. Whether it will meet emissions laws of what you can put in drains that don't go through additional scrubbing etc is another
What a load of crap (Score:2, Flamebait)
BS (Score:2)
Don't need to read the article. If something actually had 10x the capacity of Lithium it would be all over CNN and scientific journals. Guaranteed the headline is intended to mislead.
Re:BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:BS (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't need to read the article. If something actually had 10x the capacity of Lithium it would be all over CNN and scientific journals.
It's not hard to get higher energy densities than lithium ion batteries. The advantage of lithium ion batteries is that they're rechargeable by plugging it into the wall.
Stuff like this has its uses for other applications, but the entire idea of hydrogen powered cars needs to die already. Having owned an electric car, nothing beats never having to visit a gas station. Yeah, it takes longer to charge than the 2 minutes it takes to fill up, but it takes 10 seconds to plug it in when you get home for the day, and that's all the time that it consumes from **you**. Who cares how long the car takes, you save time by never having to stop by a gas station.
Unless you frequently travel outside an electric car's range, filling up time is irrelevant. If you do have to frequently drive over 200 miles in a day, then the electric car isn't for you, but gas is still better than hydrogen because the infrastructure already exists.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: BS (Score:3)
There are new batteries coming on the market in 2-3 years that will increase capacity by 2 or 3 times over what we have now, and still be safer than Li-ion batteries. Your current issues are teething problems. Once the range hits a distance that is more than even holidaymakers will drive, so for Europe that's around 800km, people will just get a hotel during holiday season and recharge over night.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, since a lot of hotels in Germany are doing exactly what I just stated, and given that they already use quite a bit of power, it shouldn't be a huge issue to load the cars overnight.
Average energy usage per day in a standard hotel (guest rooms only): between 2,500 – 7,500 kWh (50 - 150 rooms)
Capacity of 1 Tesla: 50-75 Kwh.
So they use 100-150% more energy, but that's about it. Not shocking by any means and I'm pretty sure they are likely to have the required powerlines already in place because no
Re: (Score:2)
So, what you are saying is that charging a Tesla battery will more than double the hotel's energy requirement per room (your number says 50kWh per room, which I think is bullshit, but we'll go with it).
Re: (Score:2)
50 KWh per room per day is actually underestimating the energy consumption of a hotel.
Here is a study done into energy consumption, containing figures per guestroom. The average per year is 20030 kWh, which results in slightly over 50 kWh per room per day at 100% occupancy. Given an average occupancy rate at around 70%, it would likely be closer to 70 kWh energy use per day when occupied.
See: https://zenodo.org/record/1081... [zenodo.org] ("Hotel Design and Energy Consumption", author: Bin Su)
This matches with other stu
Re: (Score:2)
Average energy usage per day in a standard hotel (guest rooms only): between 2,500 â" 7,500 kWh (50 - 150 rooms)
If that is an American decimal point then you are off by a factor of 1000.
A single room hardly can use more than 2000 Watt/hours, not killWatt/hours.
For reference: a hair dryer draws a bit more than 1000Watt. Running it for one hour would cost 1kW/h.
Re: (Score:2)
Reposting an answer to another post here, that you might have missed:
50 KWh per room per day is actually underestimating the energy consumption of a hotel. Here is a study done into energy consumption, containing figures per guestroom. The average per year is 20030 kWh, which results in slightly over 50 kWh per room per day at 100% occupancy. Given an average occupancy rate at around 70%, it would likely be closer to 70 kWh energy use per day when occupied.
(I'm not stating that that energy use is done *in t
Re: (Score:2)
50 KWh per room per day is actually underestimating the energy consumption of a hotel.
Well, could be in USA.
In Europe that makes no sense. A household of two uses about 3000kWh for a whole flat. And that means: own fridge, own cooking, own washing machine - potentially own drier etc. p.p.
(I'm not stating that that energy use is done *in that room*, this is just counting the energy usage of the entire hotel and dividing it by the number of rooms) :D
That makes more sense
So yes, it may double it.
It would sti
Re: (Score:2)
My trips don't often exceed the range of my EV but it does happen. No biggie, I don't mind stopping 10-15 mins for coffee while the car gets enough range added to get me home. But on real long trips it does matter
I agree with you there, but if you're not making those trips frequently, just rent a gas car whenever you need to. I think owning the car that is convenient for a relatively rare event is a little bit like people who buy a pickup truck because once in a while they need to haul large items. Sometimes I need that too, but I can always go get a u-haul pickup for a day.
To be clear, I'm not saying that's what **you** should do, because I think everyone has to decide for themselves what the frequency of trips has
Re: (Score:1)
the entire idea of hydrogen powered cars needs to die already.
What needs to die is this idea that there is only one valid way to build cars with zero tailpipe emissions.
Some people will not ever have a reserved parking space for charging their batteries at low and predictable prices. Refueling quickly away from home makes more sense than to park at someone else's charger for x hours.
Others will not want to spend a load of money for a large car, capable of doing the same job as their current Ford Fiesta, but scaled up because of the weight of batteries.
Others will pref
Re: (Score:2)
What needs to die is this idea that there is only one valid way to build cars with zero tailpipe emissions.
Today we can get petrol, diesel and LPG powered passenger cars with wildly different mpg, I don't get why should the BEV crowd go around forums and slashdot proselytizing that theirs is the only true way to spend R&D money. Clearly it is not.
I don't disagree with you on principle, but I don't think it's practical. The example you're comparing it to only works because there's a **vast** number of gas and diesel cars on the road, which justifies the infrastructure (by that I mean, it can be built in such a way that is actually affordable to use). You've used the word petrol, so I assume you're from the UK, but case in point, I can't find any gas stations anywhere near me in the US that have LPG available, because there aren't cars here running wi
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Enter Methanol? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Methanol is rather low energy. Even ethanol is better. Butanol better yet. Getting all the way to gasoline is rather expensive, but it's fairly easy to do better than methanol. I know that propanol is reasonably easy, I'm not sure about the longer chains than that. (I'm not sure that isopropanol would be a good choice, though. It probably would, but...well, ...)
Generally longer chains give you a more concentrated source of energy. And I'm not sure that the alcohols are the correct series to use. The
Re: (Score:1)
butanol, a drop in replacement for gasoline that can be made from GM algae engineered 10+ years ago. 110K btu/gallon vs. the 115K of gasoline.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd seriously like to understand what the advantage of magnesium-hydrogen paste fuel would be over say, a carbon-hydrogen liquid fuel, which also can be synthesized and made carbon-neutral..
Tail pipe emissions.
Conventional fuels: CO2, NOx, plus soot.
Hydrogen fuel cell: H20.
The second is much better for our health...
Hopefully InB4 (Score:2)
Conventional fuels: CO2, NOx, plus soot.
Hydrogen fuel cell: H20.
The second is much better for our health...
On reflection, I'm pretty sure that combustion of hydrogen in air also produces NOx emissions.
However, while these are pretty 'toxic' with regards human health I think they're largely a 'solved' problem - although I don't know enough about catalytic converters to say that with any great confidence.
So, the main difference would be the particulate (soot) emissions.
Re: (Score:2)
Although unrelated to the localised effects on human health that's a very good point.
Feedback loops can be a bitch.
It's worth pointing out though that it's far easier to remove 'excess' water vapour from the air, at or about ground level, than it is to remove carbon dioxide.
Still, your post does highlight that we should always be alert for any unintended consequences that may result from our actions.
Thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Reprocessing the spent magnesium oxide into magnesium hydroxide should require nothing but electrical input, unless they're trying to do fancy stuff with catalysts and intermediaries to improve efficiency (which, who knows, they might do?). Synthesizing useful hydrocarbons (such as alkanes) is doable, but requires multiple inputs and may actually wind up being less power-efficient than an electrolytic process.
Re: (Score:2)
Electrolysis of magnesium oxide is currently more efficient than synthesis of liquid hydrocarbons. I don't think either are likely to compete with batteries in light vehicles though.
Synthesized hydrocarbons might be a great option for aircraft though, and magnesium-hydrogen or aluminum air batteries might be good for long haul trucking.
Will never happen (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, it's not like the same gas station provides gasoline (usually in three flavours), diesel and propane now.
Re: (Score:2)
You live 150 miles from work?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Far more importantly, whether it's 30 minutes or 5, that means you need, in any large fuelling station - approximately a GW of power constantly, 24/7. Per station.
That kind of power isn't the kind of thing that the supply lines are built to supply.
Multiply out to all those little out-of-the-way stations and the thousands upon thousands in cities and even the assumption that you can charge enough in the same time as a conventional fuel-up, you're looking at a national grid just to run that on its own.
And th
Scale up for planes. (Score:5, Interesting)
If they can actually produce this at scale then this could be a clean fuel of interest for airplanes. Mind you, this is not an energy efficient system but large aircraft need very high energy to mass ratios to function. The current alternative is actually chemically reproducing jet fuel for air captured CO2 which is beyond merely being inefficient.
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps if they used this fuel in a very large aircraft that would work with a less efficient propulsion system; some kind of aerostat, perhaps...
Re: (Score:3)
Though, a world where completely green aircraft simply take shorter flights isn't so bad.
Re: (Score:2)
That is not really that relevant as a piston engine barely converts 20% of that into motion and a turbine just roughly 40% of it.
The dispenser is handily within reach (Score:2)
I also have high-density power paste.
-5 Perv
Loading efficiency? (Score:2)
I miss the "loading" efficiency numbers. If, to load it up, you need to use three times the electric power that you get from the hydrogen in the end, well, that would be a damper. Although I suppose that the main factor would be the hydrogen production, and that's all over the place.
Oh my god, a gas weed whacker! (Score:2)
While a 700 bar tank and the accompanying fuel cell is acceptable for a city bus or a truck, it becomes problematic with smaller vehicles, especially ones such as scooters or even full-sized motorcycles
Holy innumeracy, Batman!
These things could remain gasoline and be unnoticable to the larger problem. Indeed, given the alternative would be riding in a larger vehicle, it can be argued they are part of the solution, not problem.
Like all alt fuels... (Score:2)
Cost? Availability of raw materials? (Score:2)
Or just another misleading "Energy problem solved!" story?
Believe it when I see it (Score:2)
About every two weeks another miracle battery story comes out. It usually turns out that the battery is either purely theoretical, or it's completely impractical for one reason or another.
If there is anything to this battery, it's best bet might be for airplanes.
Hydrogen is an awful fuel (Score:2)
Water-activated magnesium flare? (Score:2)
The article is a little breathless - and if water is the source of about half the hydrogen produced, then the amount of energy represented in the paste is enormous. After all, the water isn't contributing any energy to the output - if you're "burning" hydrogen in atmospheric oxygen to produce energy.
The temperature needed to activate the paste (250C) is (roughly) 20C more than the temperature at which paper burns. And if this paste DOES produce such an enormous amount of energy as to make powering a ve
Re:Hydrogen is NOT renewable/green energy (Score:5, Informative)
No, this is a battery. They it may not release electricity, but it's still a battery. And it requires electricity to make it, but the source could be anything.
You're right that it's not a green energy, but it's a way of porting energy that's claimed as more compact and lighter than other batteries. Given that you need an engine the extract the value from it I'd take that claim with a grain or so of salt, but don't confuse it with a source of energy, it's a way of storing energy.
Re: (Score:3)
Producing hydrogen requires fossil fuels usually.
Just like electricity.
And just like electricity, it's only that way because it's the cheapest option, and it's the cheapest option because you push the cost onto society as a whole.
Just like electricity, hydrogen is very easily produced from clean sources, if you can afford it.
Re: (Score:2)
Not any longer. There have been new catalysts and electrolytes developed in the past 10 years that make the electrolysis process about 98% efficient. Use those with solar and you have green hydrogen.
Re: (Score:2)
Until recently (and perhaps still), fossil fuels were the primary source of energy for recharging electric cars. When Tesla first started building cars they didn't say "let's not bother because all the electricity comes from burning carbon", they assumed that that would not always be the case. Currently most of our hydrogen comes from converting natural gas, but it doesn't have to be that way.