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Posted on 04/27/2011 12:21:37 PM PDT by edcoil
Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists have developed a way to avoid the use of expensive platinum in hydrogen fuel cells, the environmentally friendly devices that might replace current power sources in everything from personal data devices to automobiles.
(Excerpt) Read more at lanl.gov ...
A government web site does not need excerpting.
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Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists have developed a way to avoid the use of expensive platinum in hydrogen fuel cells, the environmentally friendly devices that might replace current power sources in everything from personal data devices to automobiles.
In a paper published today in Science, Los Alamos researchers Gang Wu, Christina Johnston, and Piotr Zelenay, joined by researcher Karren More of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, describe the use of a platinum-free catalyst in the cathode of a hydrogen fuel cell. Eliminating platinum—a precious metal more expensive than gold—would solve a significant economic challenge that has thwarted widespread use of large-scale hydrogen fuel cell systems.
Polymer-electrolyte hydrogen fuel cells convert hydrogen and oxygen into electricity. The cells can be enlarged and combined in series for high-power applications, including automobiles. Under optimal conditions, the hydrogen fuel cell produces water as a “waste” product and does not emit greenhouse gasses. However, because the use of platinum in catalysts is necessary to facilitate the reactions that produce electricity within a fuel cell, widespread use of fuel cells in common applications has been cost prohibitive. An increase in the demand for platinum-based catalysts could drive up the cost of platinum even higher than its current value of nearly $1,800 an ounce.
The Los Alamos researchers developed non-precious-metal catalysts for the part of the fuel cell that reacts with oxygen. The catalysts—which use carbon (partially derived from polyaniline in a high-temperature process), and inexpensive iron and cobalt instead of platinum—yielded high power output, good efficiency, and promising longevity. The researchers found that fuel cells containing the carbon-iron-cobalt catalyst synthesized by Wu not only generated currents comparable to the output of precious-metal-catalyst fuel cells, but held up favorably when cycled on and off—a condition that can damage inferior catalysts relatively quickly.
Moreover, the carbon-iron-cobalt catalyst fuel cells effectively completed the conversion of hydrogen and oxygen into water, rather than producing large amounts of undesirable hydrogen peroxide. Inefficient conversion of the fuels, which generates hydrogen peroxide, can reduce power output by up to 50 percent, and also has the potential to destroy fuel cell membranes. Fortunately, the carbon- iron-cobalt catalysts synthesized at Los Alamos create extremely small amounts of hydrogen peroxide, even when compared with state-of-the-art platinum-based oxygen-reduction catalysts.
Because of the successful performance of the new catalyst, the Los Alamos researchers have filed a patent for it.
“The encouraging point is that we have found a catalyst with a good durability and life cycle relative to platinum-based catalysts,” said Zelenay, corresponding author for the paper. “For all intents and purposes, this is a zero-cost catalyst in comparison to platinum, so it directly addresses one of the main barriers to hydrogen fuel cells.”
The next step in the team’s research will be to better understand the mechanism underlying the carbon-iron-cobalt catalyst. Micrographic images of portions of the catalyst by researcher More have provided some insight into how it functions, but further work must be done to confirm theories by the research team. Such an understanding could lead to improvements in non-precious-metal catalysts, further increasing their efficiency and lifespan.
Project funding for the Los Alamos research came from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Office as well as from Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Laboratory-Directed Research and Development program. Microscopy research was done at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s SHaRE user facility with support from the DOE’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences.
About Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and URS for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns
Pretty exciting stuff if the article is accurate.
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Oh no!
Now the oil companies are going to kill off the Los Alamos researchers.
They invented this using money provided by the taxpayers so it belongs to the taxpayers, i.e., the people. How could they possibly get a patent? I could only see it as a step to get an international patent to prevent other countries from utilizing this without payment. But any company in the US should be able to make it without royalties.
Meanwhile, the power needed to make hydrogen is being sucked up by Obizmos electric car fleets, which in turn are sucking up the electricity from homeowners and manufacturing plants - all this goodness as Obizmo shuts down coal and gas fired power plants while driving up the price per Kw to build wind and solar on demand power plants. Gotta love the “green” plan for us...
I doubt it. The cheapest way to get hydrogen is to steam reform Natural Gas.
The most economical and common way to make hydrogen is to steam reform natural gas.
You are sadly uninformed about patents and use thereof.
First, the inventor(s) get credit for the invention.
Second, the patent is “owned” by the individual or organization employing the individual(s).
How the patent is exploited may well benefit your taxpayers but we are not socialist and society does not have any rights to this intellectual property.
Thank you for this. Looks like off grid is going to get a little bit cheaper.
BZZZZZZZZZT! Water vapor comprises about 85% of "greenhouse gasses", but thank you for playing.
(not you, thackney, whoever wrote the article)
For now, but not always.
It’s also not necessary to be seeking the cheapest way to do something, as long as the cost is reasonable and sustainable.
produces water as a “waste” product and does not emit greenhouse gasses (sic)
IIRC, water vapor is the by far the most significant atmospheric contributor to keeping our little planet warm. That effect, by the way and for anyone who has never been north of the 20th parallel, is good. It is cold that kills off life in all its myriad forms and which, via cyclical "Ice Ages", has probably done more to create the challenges to survival that have driven "evolution" (within species) over the past few million years.
Actually, it appears the other way around because of this:
How the patent is exploited may well benefit your taxpayers but we are not socialist and society does not have any rights to this intellectual property.
The idea about patents as pertains to this country came from the Founders, who thought all knowledge should be free, belonging to everybody. However, some like Madison believed that a limited temporary monopoly on the use of that knowledge could be incentive to create even more; the benefit to society would be more than the "evil" (his exact word) of the monopoly. Therefore he argued for the existence of patents and copyrights, thinking that the will of the people could prevent the abuse of these monopolies. Jefferson was against even this limited monopoly, fearing its inevitable abuse. Boy, was Jefferson right, probably even more than he could have imagined. "Intellecutal property"? Bah, "Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." -- Thomas Jefferson.
Now given that, the constitutional basis of copyright is to provide a monetary incentive to people to invest time and/or money to produce more advances that can get the protection of patent in order to recoup the investment. But the government is providing the money here, the government paid for their time. Therefore there is no consitutional basis for granting them a patent.
I do know what our patent and copyright systems have eroded into, a vast unconstitutional monster. Thus I know why they would be granted a patent under the current unconstitutional system. I just don't think it's right.
Second, the patent is “owned” by the individual or organization employing the individual(s).
And even if you want to go that way, the government is the one paying for it all, so the government is the end employment organization and gets to have the patent.
My tax dollars are being used to directly fund corporate profit. I see something wrong with that. If corporations want the profit, they should pony up the R&D funds and assume all the risk. Laying the risk on the taxpayers yet still reaping the profit is wrong.
sfl
Didn’t know about the SRP, but it seems to me that a lot of electricity is needed to run all those pumps and so forth. According to the pdf I just read it is still an expensive process. But what do I know?
In my somewhat limited experience, patents are a bit more nuanced. The purpose of a patent is actually to disseminate knowledge. The temporary ‘monopoly’ is in exchange for disclosure, so that others can develop new inventions based on the old. The alternative is to keep everything as a trade secret and no one can work off it.
Filing a patent helps commercialization. Most companies will not develop things that are not patented, since the intellectual property is difficult protect in its absence. At the university where I work, intellectual property resides with the university by state law. The revenue comes from licensing the intellectual property for commercialization. In my mind, patenting is not the problem, it is that the government does not have a logical method for ownership and licensing to obtain its return of investment. A lot of NIH work becomes profit for big Pharma based on government investment that is all but gratis for the company.
During the conversion of the fossil fuel into hydrogen, carbon is released into the atmosphere, typically as carbon dioxide. As a result, fuel cell systems using reformed fossil fuels would emit substantial amounts of carbon dioxide, so would not make much contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, as is expected to be necessary to tackle global warming.
Hydrogen is snake oil.
Hydrogen fuel cells are high-tech snake oil.
I don't want mass amounts of hydrogen gas created at central locations and piped around the country. I don't want to create that many terrorist targets.
It doesn't make sense to have hydrogen created on board the car as you're not saving energy or green house gasses.
This is all pure plain nonsense.
When they figure out how plants separate hydrogen out of water and can turn that into a cheap, reliable process, then hydrogen fuel cells might make sense.
“Thank you for this. Looks like off grid is going to get a little bit cheaper.”
that’s a good thing, with anything that can do that - off the grid
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