Posted on 08/22/2014 10:51:36 AM PDT by Red Badger
In 2015, American consumers will finally be able to purchase fuel cell cars from Toyota and other manufacturers. Although touted as zero-emissions vehicles, most of the cars will run on hydrogen made from natural gas, a fossil fuel that contributes to global warming.
Now scientists at Stanford University have developed a low-cost, emissions-free device that uses an ordinary AAA battery to produce hydrogen by water electrolysis. The battery sends an electric current through two electrodes that split liquid water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Unlike other water splitters that use precious-metal catalysts, the electrodes in the Stanford device are made of inexpensive and abundant nickel and iron.
"Using nickel and iron, which are cheap materials, we were able to make the electrocatalysts active enough to split water at room temperature with a single 1.5-volt battery," said Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford. "This is the first time anyone has used non-precious metal catalysts to split water at a voltage that low. It's quite remarkable, because normally you need expensive metals, like platinum or iridium, to achieve that voltage."
In addition to producing hydrogen, the novel water splitter could be used to make chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide, another important industrial chemical, according to Dai. He and his colleagues describe the new device in a study published in the Aug. 22 issue of the journal Nature Communications.
The promise of hydrogen
Automakers have long considered the hydrogen fuel cell a promising alternative to the gasoline engine. Fuel cell technology is essentially water splitting in reverse. A fuel cell combines stored hydrogen gas with oxygen from the air to produce electricity, which powers the car. The only byproduct is water – unlike gasoline combustion, which emits carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
Earlier this year, Hyundai began leasing fuel cell vehicles in Southern California. Toyota and Honda will begin selling fuel cell cars in 2015. Most of these vehicles will run on fuel manufactured at large industrial plants that produce hydrogen by combining very hot steam and natural gas, an energy-intensive process that releases carbon dioxide as a byproduct.
Splitting water to make hydrogen requires no fossil fuels and emits no greenhouse gases. But scientists have yet to develop an affordable, active water splitter with catalysts capable of working at industrial scales.
"It's been a constant pursuit for decades to make low-cost electrocatalysts with high activity and long durability," Dai said. "When we found out that a nickel-based catalyst is as effective as platinum, it came as a complete surprise."
Saving energy and money
The discovery was made by Stanford graduate student Ming Gong, co-lead author of the study. "Ming discovered a nickel-metal/nickel-oxide structure that turns out to be more active than pure nickel metal or pure nickel oxide alone," Dai said. "This novel structure favors hydrogen electrocatalysis, but we still don't fully understand the science behind it."
The nickel/nickel-oxide catalyst significantly lowers the voltage required to split water, which could eventually save hydrogen producers billions of dollars in electricity costs, according to Gong. His next goal is to improve the durability of the device.
"The electrodes are fairly stable, but they do slowly decay over time," he said. "The current device would probably run for days, but weeks or months would be preferable. That goal is achievable based on my most recent results."
The researchers also plan to develop a water splitter than runs on electricity produced by solar energy.
"Hydrogen is an ideal fuel for powering vehicles, buildings and storing renewable energy on the grid," said Dai. "We're very glad that we were able to make a catalyst that's very active and low cost. This shows that through nanoscale engineering of materials we can really make a difference in how we make fuels and consume energy."
Voltage isn’t really that important. What’s the wattage?
Possible, yes, practical? Who knows...................
1.21 Gigawatts.
Watts = Volts X Amps.
The Amps are dependent on the size of the electrodes and the capability of the supply.................
Just because you know the science doesn't make you smarter than a bureaucrat.
Bureaucrats have you by the short-hairs, after all.
Hydrogen generated in the way they state is not an energy source. It’s a method of energy storage, essentially a kind of battery.
You generate hydrogen by splitting water molecules using electricity, then you can burn that hydrogen in a fuel cell or internal (or external) combustion engine to produce work.
Problem is that the work you get is quite a bit less than by just running the initial electricity through a motor.
How much less I’m unclear. Would be nice to know.
You also have to generate this original electricity some way, with most electricity at the present time being generated using fossil fuels.
So the cycle is fossil fuel to electricity to hydrogen to work.
Anybody want to bet burning fossil fuel directly to generate work wouldn’t be more efficient?
You can get lots of used batteries for free that still have some capacity left. Maybe this would be a good way to make use of them.
The voltage level isn’t that important because voltage level shifting is easy and pretty efficient. I’ve regularly kicked 1.5 volts to over a dozen to drive LCD screens. Where this would be useful is storing intermittent energy sources like solar as hydrogen gas rather than in batteries, and that depends on how efficient the energy conversion is and how cheap the hardware is, not at what voltage it is done.
You can get that Mr. Fusion at O’Reilly Auto Parts. It’s right on their web site:
http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detail/EB00/121GMF.oap
Probably need the Flux Capacitor, too.
http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detail/EB00/121G.oap?keyword=121g
Yep, they “bear the sword”, and they do use it if you try to thwart them.
Dihydrogen monoxide (water) is the most significant “greenhouse gas” in the atmosphere.
It dwarfs CO2 by many orders of magnitude.
“So the cycle is fossil fuel to electricity to hydrogen to work.
Anybody want to bet burning fossil fuel directly to generate work wouldn’t be more efficient?”
There you go again, throwing reality in to destroy another enviral wet dream.
His next goal is to improve the durability of the device.
........
Now we know why this device will probably never reach the market, and why they decided to do science by press release instead.
What is the EPA estimate for miles per AAA cell?
Or is it inches?
I believe Hydrogen fuel cells are around 90% efficient. More than four times the efficiency of a typical car engine.
A 10% loss is not too much of a serious problem if you can get the power density you need for a transport fuel.
It all boils down to how efficient is it at producing hydrogen. Power in to potential power out. Power in will always be higher than the potential power
that will come out of it.
A battery is only required to start the process. When the hydrogen is run through the fuel cell a very small amount of the produced electricity is then used to continue the process. The remainder of electricity is used for whatever you want.
There truly are some “enviros” that are desiring some energy source that “doesn’t pollute”. Often when you point out the folly and the actual INCREASED “pollution” of the alternative they are supporting, they get really offended and mad.
That’s when you know this person is deriving their self-righteousness from their advocacy.
The truly evil, sick side of this is that people use this desire for righteousness to manipulate the sheeperals into supporting policies whose real goal is to disallow “commoners” the use of ANY resources, because those resources “rightfully belong to” the elite.
So is this a closed system, by which both the hydrogen and the oxygen would be captured and used to fuel an internal combustion engine?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.