The Inevitable Solar-Powered March Of The Hydrogen Fuel Cell

[RiverLover]

The Inevitable Solar-Powered March Of The Hydrogen Fuel Cell
September 7th, 2015 by Tina Casey

Researchers at Rice University are on to a relatively simple, low-cost way to get pry hydrogen loose from water, using the sun as an energy source. The new system involves channeling high-energy “hot” electrons into a useful purpose before they get a chance to cool down. If the research progresses, that’s great news for the hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle market, which has been growing in some niche sectors but stumbling over the cost barrier when it comes to passenger cars and buses.

Renewable Hydrogen From Water

For those of you new to the topic, the high energy density of hydrogen makes it ideal for fuel cell electric vehicles, but manufacturing hydrogen is an energy-intensive process that currently depends on fossil natural gas as a source.

The emergence of solar water-splitters could solve both of those problems together, by using renewable energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Wind, hydropower, and tidal energy are also possible “clean” power sources for manufacturing hydrogen from water.

Potable water resources aren’t necessarily compromised, as emerging technology works on less-than-clean water, including municipal wastewater.


The Rice University Solar Water-Splitter

The new Rice University hydrogen system resolves some of the problems besetting conventional water-splitting attempts....

Read full article here~
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/07/inevitable-solar-powered-march-hydrogen-fuel-cell/

Phenomenal news!!!

[kristopher]

1. H2 has a dismal future - it wastes too much energy

The round trip efficiency of hydrogen energy storage is atrocious. To do the same amount of work with hydrogen requires nearly 3X the energy generating infrastructure as batteries.

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[RiverLover]

3. Advances seem to be changing this.

A new solar fuel generation system, or artificial leaf, safely creates fuel from sunlight and water with record-setting efficiency and stability

Date:
August 28, 2015
Source:
California Institute of Technology

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150828142940.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Ffuel_cells+%28Fuel+Cells+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

[kristopher]

5. No, they aren't.

Show me an H2 system with a total round trip efficiency that is a 200% improvement and then we'll have something to talk about.

On the other hand, nuclear and coal proponents love hydrogen precisely because it is so energy hungry. That helps them make lots and lots of money...

[nationalize the fed]

6. no

On the other hand, nuclear and coal proponents love hydrogen precisely because it is so energy hungry. That helps them make lots and lots of money...

Is Hydrogen advocate Amory Lovins, author of 20 hydrogen myths, a member of the nuclear and/or coal industries?

Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947) is an American physicist, environmental scientist, writer, and Chairman/Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has worked in the field of energy policy and related areas for four decades...

...Amory Lovins has received ten honorary doctorates and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1984, of the World Academy of Art and Science in 1988, and of the World Business Academy in 2001. He has received the World Technology Award, the Right Livelihood Award, the Blue Planet Prize, Volvo Environment Prize, the 4th Annual Heinz Award in the Environment in 1998, and the National Design (Design Mind), Jean Meyer, and Lindbergh Awards.

Lovins is also the recipient of the Time Hero for the Planet awards, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, and the Shingo, Nissan, Mitchell, and Onassis Prizes. He has also received a MacArthur Fellowship and is an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and an Honorary Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council. Furthermore he is on the Advisory Board of the Holcim Foundation.

In 2009, Time magazine named Lovins as one of the world's 100 most influential people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory_Lovins#Awards

Trying to paint Hydrogen advocates as part of some big conspiracy between big oil, nuclear and coal is a lie and is false. Hydrogen detractors are going to have to do much better than that- over the next few years these people are going to be very busy. But they will fail- nothing can stop H2 now. Nothing.

[kristopher]

9. At the time he adopted that position it made sense...

...because petroleum shortages were creating economic chaos and lithium battery technology hadn't been developed.
Lacking modern batteries, hydrogen is the next best alternative for portable storage of energy.

Unfortunately for hydrogen proponents and fortunately for the planet, we no longer lack a superior alternative to hydrogen.

Trying to paint Hydrogen advocates as part of some big conspiracy between big oil, nuclear and coal is a lie and is false. Hydrogen detractors are going to have to do much better than that- over the next few years these people are going to be very busy. But they will fail- nothing can stop H2 now. Nothing.

Nothing is sort of right as that statement is nothing short of delusional.

As for the idea of a conspiracy, it is nothing of the sort, it is just basic economics. Large thermal plants like coal and nuclear make money by building the plants and selling the electricity from those plants. The literature on energy efficiency and the nature of our power system unequivocally establishes that the economic model governing the centralized thermal utility system is one that drives the creation of demand.

It is absolutely ludicrous for you to deny that those within this same economic model stand to reap huge, vast, gianormous profits if they can engineer shifting our reliance on petroleum to a reliance on hydrogen. Whether sourced directly from natural gas or obtained via electrolysis with energy from those central thermal plants matters little to them as long as they control the market.

Renewable proponents know the numbers - tripling the amount of renewable generation infrastructure we would otherwise need to build in order to move our transportation sector off of carbon is, to put it bluntly, fucking nuts.

[RiverLover]

7. Well, they're creating hydrogen fuel from solar & water or even municipal waste

I doubt this makes the coal/nuc/natural gas people happy. Just the opposite.

And I don't get not supporting the advances, especially for something that has Zero CO2 emissions.

In a new ad campaign produced by the agency Droga5 and tagged "Fueled by Everything," Toyota is taking the direct approach.

The company is showing, quite literally, how a Mirai can run on bullshit.

The first 3-minute spot, "Fueled by Bullsh*t," was directed by Morgan Spurlock. In it, fuel-cell engineer Scott Blanchet introduces the concept then heads for a dairy farm, where a farmer provides access to a huge pile of cow dung. The engineer loads up, the drives off to introduce us to the hydrogen-extraction process. Essentially, the poop marinates in large pools and generates biogas, which can then have the hydrogen removed. The dairy farmer returns, he and the engineer fuel up a Mirai, and they drive back to farm.

http://www.businessinsider.com/toyota-is-taking-on-the-hydrogen-car-haters--including-elon-musk-2015-4

[kristopher]

10. Niche applications may have some potential.

But there are usually better alternatives even then. For example, why turn methane into H2 and then back into electricity?
Why incur the significant energy penalty at each step when you could just burn the methane in a 60% efficient combined cycle turbine and have rapid ramping disptachable power that is a perfect fit for the variability of wind and solar?

[RiverLover]

11. Is there a way to do that as you describe?

If so, why aren't you doing it or someone else?

I think you might benefit from this....I share it with no ill will, a gentle poke in fun~

Hydrogen is the Fuel of the Future and Always Will Be – NOT!
August 4, 2015

There is an old joke that hydrogen (and hydrogen cars) are the future and always will be. The phrasing has changed from one hater, critic or denier to the next, but the sentiment is the same.

And I beg to differ on this statement. As I test drove a Mirai fuel cell vehicle (pictured above) at the Toyota of Orange, California dealership on July 30, 2015, in anticipation of the rollout of the commercial vehicle in October this year, it’s become apparent that hydrogen cars are now.

...big relevant snip...

Recent Critics and Deniers

2013 – http://www.wired.com/2013/10/elon-musk-hydrogen/ – Elon Musk calls Hydrogen Bull$#T!

2014 – http://www.autoblog.com/2014/08/05/why-battery-electric-vehicles-will-beat-fuel-cells/ – Why battery electric vehicles will beat fuel cells – Hydrogen Is The Fuel Of The Future, And Always Will Be!

2015 – http://evobsession.com/hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-fail-in-depth/ – Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars — #FAIL, In Depth

To recap, this is just a small sampling of what the hydrogen haters have had to holler about, past and present.

But, hydrogen cars are here now. And to the hydrogen haters, deniers and critics I say, “Crow is a dish best served cold."

http://energy.blognotions.com/2015/08/04/hydrogen-is-the-fuel-of-the-future-and-always-will-be-not/

Speaking of advances & the Mirai...

The car is only as green as the hydrogen it is filled with, and most of the gas comes from fossil fuels. As a result, the Mirai’s environmental credentials are about the same as those of a traditional hybrid.

All that will change, however. The Japanese government has plans to create a plentiful supply of hydrogen by 2030 using renewable energy. The Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, who was the recipient of the first Mirai, called it the “dawn of a true hydrogen society”. As part of efforts to reduce Japan’s reliance on nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, he announced a £16,000 subsidy per vehicle and plans for more than 100 refuelling stations.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/technology/toyota-mirai-worlds-first-massproduced-hydrogenpowered-car-has-a-range-of-300-miles-and-its-on-its-way-to-the-uk-31507944.html

Forgive me if I feel good about this for a moment, and happy for the planet.

[kristopher]

12. We are doing it. It is happening all around you.

What isn't happening is hydrogen. Sure, there are some very, very well publicized demonstrations, but there is nothing that even comes close to Tesla's gigafactory.

The hype around hydrogen for transportation has been around for a lot longer than lithium batteries so why isn't it getting the kind of investment that flows to lithium?

Google /energy storage market 2015/ and do some reading. You'll get hits out to about 2020 so read those also. Get back to us and let us know how much of that market is expected to be occupied by hydrogen.

[RiverLover]

13. So you mean methane from natural gas, not cow shit?

That's not really an advancement or a way to break from fossil fuels. The advances being made in hydrogen are all about getting off of fossil fuels. Or are you just blocking that out, digging in to your position come hell or high water?

As far as energy storage goes, solar hydrogen seems to provide the solution~

As Graetzel emphasized, all this is leading to solutions for the twin problems of an over-abundance of renewable energy, particularly solar, into the grid, along with the need to integrate enough storage capacity to make these intermittent forms more useful.

His colleague at EPFL, the aforementioned Professor Kevin Sivula, described the emerging solar-dependent grid model as an “energy gap” caused by the simple fact that solar peaks during the day, and in general electricity peaks at night.

That’s not a particularly difficult situation to address with today’s energy storage technology, because only a matter of hours are involved. However, when you throw seasonal and latitudinal variations into the mix, you need to project months-long energy storage requirements.

That dynamic is among the reasons why EPFL is one of a number of A-list research institutions turning attention to solar-powered hydrogen production, aka a “solar refinery” that can churn out hydrogen — essentially, a means of storing solar energy in a simple chemical bond.

The idea, as Sivula describes it, is that solar hydrogen would provide a stable solar energy storage platform for plastics manufacturing and the many other economic sectors that currently rely on fossil sources for foundational ingredients, in addition to enabling solar-based fuel for aircraft as well as ground vehicles....

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/08/20/lowdown-solar-hydrogen-power-gas-epfls-graetzle/

[kristopher]

14. No, I mean captured methane from landfills and animal waste.

You aren't correct in your straw man (mis)assumption and the rest of what you said about biofuels for use in CCTs being part of a path leading to continued use of carbon simply doesn't hold water.

However, as things stand and looking into the foreseeable future, H2 for transportation is a basic non-starter due to abysmal well to wheel efficiency. No one is going to pay for 3X the renewable infrastructure in order to avoid batteries. And in other applications it is in competition with a very wide range of other, probably-more-efficient, storage mediums/systems.

That there will be some niches where the application is best suited to hydrogen storage is highly probable; but the hype about hydrogen is unwilling to admit that. They are still living in the glory days; their time in the national limelight that came about when we first started trying to crack this energy nut.

Here's an example I like that demonstrates how we can get off on the wrong foot sometimes, and how mis-steps like that can have long term consequences.

When the colonized foreign countries hosting the oil companies of the West realized they could take their oil back, they choked our supply off and caused massive cultural disruption that we are still trying to recover from today. In response we did a first of a kind resource assessment of all our known energy assets. Oil, coal, natural gas, uranium, geothermal, biofuels, wind, water, and solar were all investigated with an eye to modern extraction technology and how our needs might be met.

We found a lot of coal, a bit of hydro, some potential in biofuels, and so on. We found a huge amount of of solar, but it was expensive as hell to harvest it. Most disappointing was wind - we had almost none.

Now, knowing the scale of the wind industry of today it probably appears there is a disconnect on that, and therein lies the story.

When the wind assessment was accomplished they looked for the most widely used and consistent data set they could find and used that to develop a first cut analysis of the total national resource. The data set they used came from the Federally regulated aviation industry and the wind data that was gathered and maintained in a consistent fashion at airports across the nation. What they forgot to factor in was the fact that airports are deliberately built in the least windy locations available.

Wind analysis = Garbage In Garbage Out.

By the time the mistake was recognized Reagan was president and it was another 20 years before wind - our most readily developable resource - really got any economic traction at all. Instead we set out on a path of biofuels, hydrogen storage, and large gigawatt scale generating plants, all of them great ingredients in the recipe for pushing a culture to the right.

I don't confront the hype about hydrogen and nuclear because i have some sort of mental derangement; I confront it because the hype is based on false beliefs coming from outdated thinking and a lack of a clear, coherent picture of the full range of resources available to us.

The transition away from carbon is what I do - exclusively. My only dog in this hunt is the one searching for the least cost, safest, quickest, most efficient path away from carbon.

[itsrobert]

2. I am predicting a different future

Many sci-fi movies/tv show people driving in small vehicles. I think the future will be big vehicles fueled by new technology such as this.

[nationalize the fed]

4. k+r excellent post

Potable water resources aren’t necessarily compromised, as emerging technology works on less-than-clean water, including municipal wastewater.

And no doubt the enterprising Japanese and Koreans will figure out how to make it work with sea water, which covers 3/4 of the planet.

There are 22 litres of hydrogen in ONE TABLESPOON of water. Factor that. Endless clean energy.

Solar Hydrogen will change everything

It's the fuel of the future
http://www.amazon.com/Solar-Hydrogen-Future-Mario-Pagliaro/dp/1849731950/


As posted before, the new Panasonic Solar Panels MAKE HYDROGEN



The future home is where the hydrogen power generator is
http://asia.nikkei.com/Tech-Science/Tech/The-future-home-is-where-the-hydrogen-power-generator-is

[RiverLover]

8. That pic is so very cool!

Yours is an excellent post as well, ntf. Thank you!!!