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.
Re:Nonsense. (Score:4, Insightful)
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: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.
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It mentions a beer refrigerator size unit. I would imagine that would be smaller than a normal refrigerator.
Depends on how much beer you have.
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Yeah, I could park my SUV in the beer refrigerator at the convenience store down the street.
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>> Would you really want to drive a minivan that seats two people just to have a cheap fuel cell?
Yes.
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"A moving power plant has to worry about its power-to-weight ratio, and its power-to-volume ratio. "
Actually, studies have shown that the make-or-break factor for hydrogen isn't the vehicle, it's long-term storage and transport of the gas.
The other issues (storage tanks for vehicles, power-to-weight ratios, etc.) have all been sufficiently solved. Allow hydrogen to be economically produced at local plants, and you have a viable fuel.
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Would you really want to drive a minivan that seats two people just to have a cheap fuel cell?
Confused here. What's the problem? Why would anyone care?
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"Would you really want to drive a minivan that seats two people just to have a cheap fuel cell?"
I drive such a minivan, it's called a bike.
Why bother with a fuel cell? use an Internal Combustion Engine [wikipedia.org]
powered by hydrogen?
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I hear you.
I see it as an evolutionary process, the hydrogen powered ICE (Internal Combustable Engine) while not that efficient, may well prove to be better than a gasoline powered unit. If we can keep costs down, and then when the next generation of technology is ready to do it cheaply, then slide it in. You will always have early adopters ready to spend big money right away in order to be more green, or perhaps burn less gas. But like the chevy volt, [treehugger.com] who can affort to pay the full cost of new technolo
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Toyota claims 38% on the current Prius engine.
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If not, well, Science marches on and I'll update the data I quote. And, by the way, cooool.
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"Fancy tank" is understating the issue. Hydrogen stored at 5000psi and used for an ICE will get you about 1/5th the range of the same volume of gasoline.
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If you lower the cost of the fuel enough, the cost of the engine becomes moot.
No, high fixed costs can trump low variable costs easily. Keep in mind opportunity costs. You could have put that money into something else, like an investment, rather than an expensive engine. So a cheap engine with moderate fuel costs can beat a very expensive engine with no fuel costs.
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You are not factoring in time and are assuming the money is disposable. Over a longer period of time the fuel costs will add up to more than the expensive engine. Assume we need the engine now and your investment won't pay off for years. You don't get the return till way after you have gained the return and benefit of the more expensive engine. And most people don't factor in today's real cost in the investment... i.e. the return dollars in the future are cheaper than today's dollars.
Never mind factors like
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You are not factoring in time and are assuming the money is disposable.
No way. You aren't factoring in time. I already explained how I factor in (and you should as well) time via the "opportunity cost" investment. There's also the closely related concept of time value of money, where it is better to have money now than later, all else being equal.
And of course, money is fungible. That's one of the prime features of money. We don't need the hugely expensive engine now and we can find an investment that pays off in the near future rather than some distant future.
Never mind factors like, will the moderate priced engine have higher operation and consequential costs?
Why of course
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COST =/= PRICE
That billion bucks is a cost not a price. Get it now?
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Rocket Fuel? (Score:2)
Good for rocket fuel, perhaps? Although there's still the cost of storage
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Generally most hydrogen is produced from breaking down natural gas. So this won't really impact rocket fuel until it can get hydrogen produced by electrolysis below that of natural gas. With the glut from fracking, I don't see this happening, as alot of our energy now is generated from natural gas. Generating energy from natural gas to use it to split water is likely not as efficient as stripping off the hydrogen directly.
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"I suppose it could lead to a more 'low-tech' way of producing fuel on the Moon, asteroids, or the like."
It's Mars you're thinking of, it has so much of that stuff that you can see the red glow from earth with the naked eye.
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.
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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.
Like everything the fuels industry touches, it will make water more expensive than it already is.
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Like everything the fuels industry touches, it will make water more expensive than it already is.
Water expensive? Maybe in a desert, but everywhere else, distilled water falls from the sky. Most of the Earth's surface is good old dihydrogen monoxide. How is the fuels industry making water expensive?
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It might actually make a lot more sense to process the hydrogen along with a carbon source into a more readily usable fuel. We know quite a lot about transporting methane and propane.
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It looks like I'm a bit more ignorant than I thought. Hello, wikipedia?
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Nope, I'm still ignorant. I thought all it took was a DC current and saltwater, with oxygen bubbling from one lead and hydrogen from the other?
Can one of you guys enlighten me? I hate being ignorant.
You are more or less right. That does work. However, the question is not just whether you can do it, but also how fast it happens and how much energy is lost in the process. Catalysts, like the one in the article, reduce energy barriers / increase the probability of a reaction and so make the whole thing more efficient. That can take things from "theoretically interesting" to "profitable industry".
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Nope, I'm still ignorant. I thought all it took was a DC current and saltwater, with oxygen bubbling from one lead and hydrogen from the other?
That is all it takes and makes for a great science lab demonstration.
Unfortunately, the process it not terribly efficient in its usage of electricity.
Using a catalyst allows you to get the same or more [output] from your reaction.
Where the catalyst is used depends on whatever works.
Sometimes it's the anode or cathode, sometimes it's in your electrolyte solution, and sometimes it's an electrolyte plate.
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I'm not sure it will lower the cost much, the articles seemed misleading, the catalysts are 1000X cheaper, not the resulting processing + costs. If the catalyst is 1000X cheaper, but poison quickly you might barely make break-even. Efficiency of the amortized costs is more important.
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It might be helpful. (Score:4, Interesting)
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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-s
Re:It might be helpful. (Score:5, Informative)
People seem to think that electricity is efficient. In practice, very large amounts are lost during transport, and not only during production.
Less than 5% of the power in the US is lost in transmission. This is significant, but hydrogen has many special problems which will probably make your idea a non-starter for the foreseeable future.
Re:It might be helpful. (Score:4, Informative)
Less than 5% of the power in the US is lost in transmission. This is significant, but hydrogen has many special problems which will probably make your idea a non-starter for the foreseeable future.
Problems such as the fact that hydrogen electrolysis loses way more than 5% of the energy. It was around 50% last time I checked and most of the new research that gets mentioned on slashdot completely fails to mention efficiency at all leading me to believe they have not improved it.
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If your harvesting wind-turbine power during non-demand times, what's better 1.25 MW @ 15% = 180 KW or 0MW @ 75% = 0KW ? Maybe the money earned isn't enough to offset the added wear and tear on the turbine or maybe it's what it takes to push wind-farms into the realm of economic feasibility; some brave souls will have to find out.
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It's been tried, but they only used it to run on-site generators. And that's the rub; using the hydrogen on-site is not a winning proposition because it's expensive and inefficient, and transporting the hydrogen is a non-starter. We have significant trouble maintaining electrical lines and they are ever so much simpler than a gas pipeline. The pipelines we use to transport oil fail all the time, and they are far simpler than a hydrogen pipeline would be. We have the technology to build pipelines that "never
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"That's 'only' 580 km of cable, providing the european continent with cheap and green hydro power from Norway."
I thought Europe was bigger than that. At least it was when I last looked at a map.Even if you put this cable straight across the Baltic, its not going to reach all the way to Italy or Greece.
Re:It might be helpful. (Score:5, Informative)
Hydrogen is a much smaller molecule than methane which means that it's harder to make pipes and tanks which don't leak. In addition it reacts with a lot of things methane dosn't react with. So there is less choice of materials to make those pipes and tanks out of.
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Or you can generate liquid fuels (methanol, ethanol, gasoline, diesel) using Fischer and Tropsch style reactions which has been making a lot of progress lately. It's a better way to transport hydrogene.
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hydrogen equals poor storage of energy (Score:3, Insightful)
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Per kilogram it is more dense energy dense but not by volume. You still have to carry somewhere around 6 times the volume of hydrogen to equal the same volume amount of gasoline. Look at wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
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I can't seem to find the article right now, but studies have been done that show combustion engines are happiest with ~80% gasoline and ~20% hydrogen.
Your exhaust is cleaner and your fuel efficiency improves.
There are systems right now for big rigs, trucks, and RVs.
The only catch is that you have to essentially reprogram your ECU to take full advantage of the hydrogen.
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Per kilogram it is more dense energy dense but not by volume. You still have to carry somewhere around 6 times the volume of hydrogen to equal the same volume amount of gasoline. Look at wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density [wikipedia.org]
Well hydrogen is the least dense of all matter. Of course it isn't going to be as energy dense per volume.
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nuclear weaponry != chemistry (Score:3, Informative)
While we are at it, E=mc^2, all matter has the same energy density. Stop making useless comparisons. If you have a fusion reactor in your phone, my anti-matter+ air battery will beat it. What we care about is usefulness. Hydrogen fuel cells have good energy density for the mass yes, but for the volume the suck.
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.
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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...
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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 come
Fusion candidates (Score:2)
Actually for energy from single-step fusion fusing deutrium into He4 is as good as it gets at about 6MeV per nucleon. Nuclear binding energy per nucleon (MeV, negative): from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Binding_energy_curve_-_common_isotopes.svg ... ...
H1* - 0
H2 - 1.1
He3 - 2.5
H3 - 2.9
He4* - 7.1
Li6 - 5.3
Li7* - 5.7
Be9* - 6.5
B11* - 6.9
Fe56 - 8.8 (atom with minimum energy)
U235 - 7.6
(*dominant natural isotope)
He4 is already pretty close to the minimum energy state, so you're not going to get much more en
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Unless I misremember fusion isn't actually used for energy in hydrogen bombs so much as for an extra flood of fast neutrons to since the fission reaction is otherwise too slow to consume more than a tiny percentage of the material before it gets blown apart.
As for p-B11 fusion - I believe the Polywell folks were scheduled to demonstrate it last year as one of their progress milestones, and the Navy reported satisfactory progress. Take that as you will, the details will likely remain secret for another dec
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the details will likely remain secret for another decade.
If they have something viable, I really hope not.
The Navy could do more for world peace than they ever could with ships and subs if they have their hands on a fusion reactor that works (read : is practical).
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> The Navy could do more for world peace than they ever could with ships and subs if they have their hands on a fusion reactor that works (read : is practical).
If I were being cynical then I'd say that's an excellent reason for them to keep it secret as long as possible - world peace would do horrible things to their budget.
In a more virtuous world I would still expect them to keep quiet at least until the researchers could convert their viable reactor into a viable powerplant. Generating fusion is afte
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"If you can't efficiently harness it, where does the "use" come in,"
Implying the direct purpose of harnessing energy to destroy things isn't efficient.
No wonder you posted as AC. You know about as much as the GP to this entire convo.
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Fusion is not in the realm of chemistry.
All fusion is not the same. Stellar fusion employs different nuclear reactions than what a weapon employs. A fusion reactor is different yet again, but more closely resembling stellar fusion.
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"The only way you have not completely lost the thread of the original story is unless you are suggesting that this new process provides an easy way to create deuterium"
It appears you cannot read and comprehend what is being talked about. Let me reiterate for you.
GP claims Hydrogen has shit energy density. I counter with "If it has shit energy density, why is it used in nuclear weapons as the secondary fusion detonation?"
You suddenly come in and your brain segues over to the other side of the conversation wi
Re:hydrogen equals poor storage of energy (Score:4, Informative)
The term "hydrogen bomb" has always been a misnomer. Also most modern weapons dispense with the fusion altogether - the secondary is simply another fission core imploded by the primary radiation rather than by conventional explosives. Fusion it seems has gone out of style and with today's accuracy is no longer needed aside from boosting which is rather trivial.
Weapons that do use fusion mainly employ fusion as a neutron generator to cause fission in a fissile tamper thus dramatically increasing yield (fission 1%-fusion 15%-fission 84% portion of yield respectively). The weapons that use fusion for primary weapon effect are either banned and out of production (so called neutron bombs which is basically just a bomb as mentioned above without the fissile tamper) or are three stage weapons so huge as to be impractical these days like the Tsar Bomba. Some bombs produce tritium by bombarding lithium deutride with neutrons from a fission "spark plug" in the secondary which is in turn fused producing neutrons for the above cycle... but this can hardly be called a "hydrogen bomb". "Lithium bomb" would be better.
Of course this is all open source regurgitation.
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon"
Second sentence - " It is colloquially referred to as a hydrogen bomb or H-bomb because it employs hydrogen fusion"
Plenty of our nuclear weapons stockpile employs fission/fusion combo detonations that utilize hydrogen. This is the USA. Other countries don't employ the use of hydrogen, or only have a couple of weapons that utilize it (typically done in the gun-format when utilized.)
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In the future, hopefully we'll have nuclear reactors in every car. A small fusion generator powering every car. If we can shrink it small enough and keep it energy positive, it'll be everywhere.
Sure, sounds good to me. If we're thinking big, make mine the flying car I've been waiting for ;-)
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We've been 5 years away from the flying car for the last 30 years.
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Maybe one day, if we can manage some sort of low-energy fusion. Most fusion research I've seen though seems to have efficiency scale with size, with breakeven power production being virtually impossible in a volume smaller than several meters without some sort of near-perfect high-temperature superconductors. Moreover most fusion reactions release far more neutron radiation per watt than a fission reaction, requiring thick shielding, and aneutronic fusion reactions all require drastically higher energies
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Cheap hydrogen? (Score:4, Funny)
Hype as usual (Score:5, Informative)
Basically the same catalysts have been reported previously [acs.org]. In this new paper, they don't bother to highlight the fact that their films are extremely thick, so of course they get great catalytic activity (though it's an oxide, so the series resistance might just be a problem...)
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I'll believe it when I see it in production (Score:2)
Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end (Score:4, Interesting)
I think hydrogen fuel cells are a dead-end technology. Batteries are steadily improving and by the time they're able to solve the fuel cell issues there won't be demand. By then batteries or possibly graphene supercapacitors will have taken over, with much higher efficiency. Lithium batteries are very efficient at storing energy and it's a lot simpler to just use a battery, an inverter and an electric motor than a hydrogen storage system, fuel cell, inverter and electric motor.
They're already able to give cars 150 miles worth of charge in 30 minutes and the batteries will last for many years before they need replacing.
Even with a catylist, cracking water to make hydrogen then storing it will be nowhere near as efficient. The energy density of hydrogen is also fairly low. I believe the future belongs to batteries and all-electric vehicles. I realized this after having acquired an EV of my own, a Tesla model S.
EVs are a different mindset. Each night when I come home I spend about 10 seconds plugging in. In the morning it takes 10 seconds to unplug and I basically have a full tank. Even the current wait at a supercharger is not necessarily time wasted unlike when filling a gasoline car. There is no reason for me to stand next to the car waiting for it to fill up. I can just as easily walk over to a restaraunt and have a nice meal for the price of filling up a tank, or I could surf the web, read E-mail, whatever.
Right now the biggest limitation is there are not enough of these rapid charging stations, but that will change as the infrastructure improves. The other biggest limitation is the cost, but the cost of batteries is steadily declining while the capacity is steadily increasing. The cost of electric motors like what Tesla uses should not be that high, especially since their induction motors do not contain any rare-earth minerals.
-Aaron
Re:Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure there will be EVs for a while, but the fuel of the future will very likely be algae based ethanol. It has close to the energy density of gasoline (much better than batteries for decades to come) and doesn't require long charging times. It is also close to carbon neutral (and I think, given the feed potential, could be considered carbon negative). And it is efficient enough to be practically grown.
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Probably. Hydrogen's a lousy fuel for a lot of purposes.
Where many is "2". Long-lasting rechargeable batteries are like clean diesel, solar power or good fluorescent bulbs; there's always someone swearing that THIS iteration doesn't have the problems the previous iteration did. And they're always wrong.
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The Panasonic batteries used in my car will maintain 80% of their original capacity after 2000 full charge/discharge cycles. With my daily 15 mile (each way) commute I use about 11% of the battery capacity. 2000 / 0.11 = 18,181 days of usage, or about 49 years until I'm at 80% capacity. There is also some loss based on time, but I should be able to easily get over 10 years of use out of them. Now if I drove over 200 miles each day the batteries will last significantly less time, but the battery performance
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Actually the power needed for fast charging is not as big of a problem as one might think. There have been some big advances in large batteries (i.e. liquid metal batteries) which can charge during non-peak load times. Also, with EVs most people will be charging at night at home. The grid can already handle this for millions of cars right now at night.
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It's easy to get the numbers. My Tesla already handles 90KW for charging and the connector isn't all that large. The battery charges at 250A, 360V DC. This type of power is regularly handled without much difficulty, especially when you consider that the peak energy usage of my model S is 320KW. The battery, inverter and motor are water cooled with a radiator that is significantly smaller than is used for an internal combustion engine. Charging Li-Ion batteries is highly efficient, 85-90%+. Capacitors are al
Reading this half asleep (Score:2)
Great news! (Score:2)
This is great news for all you Hindenburg reenactors out there!
Paywalled (Score:2)
Once again, Slashdot promotes and links to a paywalled source.
Toxic? (Score:2)
Neither ruthenium nor iridium should be particularly toxic. Because of their rarity, very little is actually known about their toxicity. The metals are very inert, and most of the salts are insoluble in water. Their toxicity should be similar to platinum. Ruthenium currently trades for about US$100/troy oz, iridium trades for about US$1000/troy oz.
Snake Oil (Score:2)
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What link did you click, here's the paper linked to:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/03/27/science.1233638.full [sciencemag.org]
The last sentence in the paper:
Given the broad applicability of this approach and the acute stoichiometric control of the metal compositions, we contend that the PMOD technique opens an entirely new parameter space for discovery and optimization of new heterogeneous electrocatalysts.
is the "hype", which is preceded by several pages of data.
Storage and compression (Score:2)
I lost a lot of fait in hydrogen when I had seen the car which runs on compressed air. The pressures used to compress the air for that car is less than the pressures needed to compress hydrogen is usually compressed.
As I understand it hydrogen needs to be compressed because it is very voluminous and the containers would be to large to be useful otherwise.
I believe hydrogen is also compressed more than with cars running on natural gas.
Re:catalyze (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah... I remember the first time I slashdotted on weed.
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I see you got some THC catalyzer...
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We'll find a good use for hydrogen one day. The idea of sunshine + sea water + rust = hydrogen + ??? = portable energy sounds so good though. We just need to solve for ???
Maybe it's not portable though, maybe it's just a temporary store that then takes more sunshine to convert back to electricity.
Not terribly efficient but if the hard components are cheap enough it's really just wasting a little sunshine. Not too bad as a trade off for base load from solar/wind power. It has its uses in any case.
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If possible I'd mod GP as -5 Informative (i.e. intended to be informative but failed miserably) and you at +5 insightful.