New Catalyst Allows Cheaper Hydrogen Production 191
First time accepted submitter CanadianRealist writes "Electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen is very inefficient without the use of a catalyst. Unfortunately catalysts are currently made of crystals containing rare, expensive toxic metals such as ruthenium and iridium. Two chemists from the University of Calgary have invented a process to make a catalyst using relatively non-toxic metal compounds such as iron oxide, for 1/1000 the cost of currently used catalysts.
It is suggested this would make it more feasible to use electrolysis of water to create hydrogen as a method of storing energy from variable green power sources such as wind and solar."
Nonsense. (Score:4, Insightful)
There may be some benefit to lowering the cost of electrolysis, but the real problem is still the cost of fuel cells, or the inefficiency of producing power from the hydrogen through conventional means.
hydrogen equals poor storage of energy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nonsense. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It might be helpful. (Score:3, Insightful)
Even better, if you can generate hydrogen with a large efficiency, it might be more efficient to transport the gas, instead of electricity.
People seem to think that electricity is efficient. In practice, very large amounts are lost during transport, and not only during production.
At a certain point, it may be more efficient to transport a fuel, and not only for 'mobile' use. We already do so with natural gas, there is no reason not to do so with hydrogen. Maybe not on a household scale, but to local small-scale electricity stations that produce 220 or 110V 100 meter away from your house. What you loose in efficiency generating it, you win back in efficiency savings transporting it.
Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't wanna be mean, but you have a glass roof... Chemistry is not the right level of abstraction, if you are going to talk about nuclear interactions...
And if you wanna consider the potential nuclear energy of matter, you yourself are a huge walking fuel depot, the only problem is fusing your atoms...
Re:Nonsense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheap fuel means you can spend a little more on the system, sure, but there are limits.
In stationary power plants this is true, but cars have to move. A moving power plant has to worry about its power-to-weight ratio, and its power-to-volume ratio. Would you really want to drive a minivan that seats two people just to have a cheap fuel cell?
Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy (Score:2, Insightful)
The story said jack crap about Hydrogen storage for fusion, in addition, we don't have a method at the moment for using Hydrogen fusion as an energy source.
I like your bit about nuclear weaponry (sic), the reason we use it as oppose to, I dunno, Lithium, just something out of the air here, is because it is simpler and therefore easier to build a detonation device out of. Not because we feel that we're going to get more bang per buck with Hydrogen. When it comes to leveling cities, cheap and effective is favored more over costly and unsure.
Another thing, even if we used Hydrogen for energy in the fusion way of things, it's still pretty shitty compared to say Helium or Boron, wild guess as to why Einstein,
Finally, basic high school chemistry would have taught you JACK SHIT about fusion since that's not fucking chemistry!!! Please feel free to educate yourself about the difference between nuclear physics and fucking chemistry. You have an awesome rest of your life.
Re:Nonsense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Transportation and storage are huge problems as well. Tiny leaks that don't really matter for methane or propane would be a big problem for hydrogen. Meanwhile, hydrogen makes metals brittle.
The catalyst is not the problem (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Nonsense. (Score:4, Insightful)
Cheap fuel means you can spend a little more on the system, sure, but there are limits.
In stationary power plants this is true, but cars have to move. A moving power plant has to worry about its power-to-weight ratio, and its power-to-volume ratio. Would you really want to drive a minivan that seats two people just to have a cheap fuel cell?
So use it for stationary power plants. Wind and such tend to produce energy when it's not needed; this would be an excellent way to mitigate that.
Re:nuclear weaponry != chemistry (Score:4, Insightful)
All the energy we use (apart from Fission reactors and geothermal) comes from a fusion reactor, its just that the reactor is 1 AU away. Most of the energy we use has been stored in the form of carbon (coal) or hydrocarbons (oil and gas) over millions of years. But we can't continue using that source since there is already too much CO2 in the atmosphere..
We can utilise some of tthe energy from that fusion reactor directly (solar) or indirectly (wind) but its not a constant reliable supply. Extracting hydrogrn from water is a way of storing that energy so we can use it when the wind is not blowing and the sun is blocked by clouds or at night, and also as a war of fueling transportation which currently uses carbon based fuels.Hydrogen atill has a better energy density per weight than batteries.