New hydrogen storage breakthrough

[Bruce McAuley]

<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050907102549.htm>

This is from Science Daily, and is likely the answer to hydrogen storage for fuel cell automobiles. Might work good for home power units also.

Bruce

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. About time, too. with oil on its last legs. Did i just say that?

If only we could clone Rush. His gas production has to be at least as efficient as ammonia.

Great news, though. but notice that America is NOT in the forefront anymore. With these anti-science asses in charge of our country, we will soon be importing ideas, technologies and scientists.

[Tace]

2. Now We Just Have Figure Out How To Get The Hydrogen

It costs more energy to make hydrogen than it produces. It's a net energy loser.

[ret5hd]

3. from the (short on details) article...

this SOUNDS like it MIGHT be different...the pellet is recharged with ammonia, not hydrogen, and the hydrogen in the ammonia is released by using a catalyst.

i don't know enough about any applicable field to say with any authority whether anything i have said is applicable to your reply, BUT it does seem different than elctrically freeing hydrogen from say, water, which has exactly the problem you are talking about.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. The way to think of H2 is not as an energy source, but as a storage

technology, like a battery. For example, suppose you have a way of making lots of cheap electricity (e.g. solar, wind, wave power, whatever), but can only do it at certain times of day or even certain parts of the year. You use the electricity to produce H2 & store it. That is the role for H2. A much better way of storing electic energy than a battery.

[Strelnikov_]

8. How Is H2 Better Than A Battery?

My understanding is that H2 storage efficiency is 20%, whereas batteries is 70%.

Carrying the Energy Future
Comparing Hydrogen and Electricity
for Transmission, Storage and Transportation
June 2004

http://www.ilea.org/downloads/MazzaHammerschlag.pdf

Direct electricity is far more efficient than ReH2. Comparable scenarios show direct electricity delivering energy with 92% efficiency, while pipeline scenarios range from 45-63%.

ReH2 is exceeded in efficiency by advanced batteries, compressed air and pumped water storage by a factor of at least 1.6. In effect, using ReH2 instead of other storage media would waste substantial amounts of a clean energy resource.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. Thanks for the information. I'm certainly willing to back off

on an incorrect position & learn something.

[skids]

5. I always struggle to understand...

Why the Fuel Cell advocates are so damn hyped about hydrogen.

The real breakthrough fuel cells bring to the table is the proton exchange membrane, and that works with a variety of compounds.

This obsession with hydrogen is really illogical.

[NNadir]

6. I don't know the chemistry, but I don't think this can be dismissed.

I've often thought of ammonia has a hydrogen carrier, since it has good physical properties. It's toxicity left something to be desired though. That's why I switched allegience to DME. But if this can be moved beyond the benchtop, it may be worth a serious look.

[hunter]

7. Liquid anhydrous ammonia is wicked stuff.

I probably live in the liquid anhydrous ammonia capital of the United States, where the stuff is very commonly used by the agriculture industry as both a fertilizer and a refrigerant. It is also used to make methamphetamines, which is another big business here. Our city celebrates an "Ammonia Safety Day" and I think half my neighbors have had some sort of formal training in anhydrous ammonia handling.

DME is a much safer fuel than ammonia. Unfortunately DME can be abused as an inhalent -- think of people "huffing" hair spray -- but then again there are scattered reports of people abusing the propene and butene in regular bottled "propane" gas.

This is a problem I'm working on in my spare time. From a security standpoint I think a DME based energy infrastructure would be a good thing to build. DME is an excellent cooking and heating fuel, and it is much easier to use than methane ("natural gas") as a fuel for diesel powered railroads, trucks, and busses.

[NNadir]

9. I agree with everything you say.

DME is superior to ammonia when gaseous compounds are used.

[Bruce McAuley]

11. So what's DME, and where do we get it?

And is it a liquid we can burn in diesel cars? Will it put out pollutants in a diesel?
For that matter, can hydrogen be used to directly run an internal combustion engine? If this powdered ammonia is simply a storage medium, it should be re-usable or recyclable, I would suspect. The hydrogen can be created anywhere there's excess electricity and water, the problem has always seemed to be the storage of the element. You seem to be saying the electricity would be better used to charge a battery, if I'm hearing correctly? Just wondering.

Bruce

[hunter]

12. Dimethyl ether, DME, can be made from a variety of feedstocks.

Currently most DME is made from natural gas.

DME's physical properties are very similar to propane. It is commonly used as the propellent in hair spray and other aerosol cans. It is a good fuel for diesel engines; better than natural gas, and much easier to store. There are no particulates in the exhaust.

DME is also a good fuel for cooking. Many nations are investigating DME as a replacement for less desirable cooking fuels such as wood, charcoal, coal, kersosene, alcohol, or dung. (Alcohol fuels are surprisingly dangerous in comparison to bottled gasses.)

If you happen to have some hydrogen about, and some carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide, the synthesis of DME is pretty straightforward. It could be made using a high temperature nuclear reactor and waste carbon dioxide from other industrial processes. It can also be made from coal or biomass.

In any case, DME is much easier to store and transport than hydrogen.

Hydrogen works just fine in internal combustion automobile engines. The major problem with using hydrogen in automobiles that hasn't been solved yet is storing it. Hydrogen cars don't go far between fillups. If you are generating your own energy, say using a wind turbine, you are probably better off using an electric car.

[Bruce McAuley]

13. So a standard car could be adapted to run on DME?

It sounds feasible, if it's like propane.
Also, if this ammonia powdered pellet technology works out, why couldn't I just use hydrogen to run my old Volkswagen Fox, with a little jiggering to the injection system and the powder extraction system?
I already have a good car, why buy an electric if my old car can be made zero-pollution?

Bruce

[hunter]

14. DME is a diesel fuel.

I'm just guessing, but I imagine a standard spark-ignited gasoline engine would suffer terrible knocking (assuming it ran at all...) if you tried to fuel it with DME.

Propane and hydrogen have octane ratings of over 100, much higher than that of regular 87 octane gasoline, so a standard gasoline engine with the right sort of carburator or fuel injection system will run just fine on propane or hydrogen.

A more efficient hydrogen or propane fueled engine has a higher compression ratio than a standard gasoline engine to take advantage of the higher octane rating of those fuels.

[Bruce McAuley]

15. I can drive my old car into the future then, it sounds like.

If they can solve the hydrogen storage problem I can re-jet my old VW for hydrogen gas power, just like propane but way cleaner since it has no carbon atoms to create pollution at all. If DME becomes the fuel of choice, I would have to find an older VW diesel to shovel into the engine compartment, assuming it can be re-jiggered to run on DME. Just a question of how many carbon atoms DME emits, I guess, but I'm not sure about that.
I'm an old fart, and want to drive my tried and true car rather than buying a whole new set of systems, but that's just me.

Bruce