Posted on 08/30/2011 6:38:50 PM PDT by Red Badger
A team of USC scientists has developed a robust, efficient method of using hydrogen as a fuel source.
Hydrogen makes a great fuel because of it can easily be converted to electricity hydrogen is that, because it is a gas, it can only be stored in high pressure or cryogenic tanks.
In a vehicle with a tank full of hydrogen, "if you got into a wreck, you'd have a problem," said Travis Williams, assistant professor of chemistry at the USC Dornsife College.
A possible solution is to store hydrogen in a safe chemical form. Earlier this year, Williams and his team figured out a way to release hydrogen from an innocuous chemical material — a nitrogen-boron complex, ammonia borane— that can be stored as a stable solid.
Now the team has developed a catalyst system that releases enough hydrogen from its storage in ammonia borane to make it usable as a fuel source. Moreover, the system is air-stable and re-usable, unlike other systems for hydrogen storage on boron and metal hydrides.
The research was published this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
"Ours is the first game in town for reusable, air stabile ammonia borane dehydrogenation," Williams said, adding that the USC Stevens Institute is in the process of patenting the system. The system is sufficiently lightweight and efficient to have potential fuel applications ranging from motor-driven cycles to small aircraft, he said.
More information: A Robust, Air-Stable, Reusable Ruthenium Catalyst for Dehydrogenation of Ammonia Borane, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Article ASAP. DOI: 10.1021/ja2058154
Abstract:
We describe an efficient homogeneous ruthenium catalyst for the dehydrogenation of ammonia borane (AB).
This catalyst liberates more than 2 equiv of H2 and up to 4.6 system wt % H2 from concentrated AB suspensions under air. Importantly, this catalyst is robust, delivering several cycles of dehydrogenation at high [AB] without loss of catalytic activity, even with exposure to air and water.
I cant afford a Mercedes.......
Splitting hydrogen from oxygen in a water molecule takes 118 kcal no matter how you cut it. Using solar generated electricity to perform hydrolysis only combines the worst of both worlds.
DOH! I know just enough about most things to be wrong.
For later reading. It’s certainly full of hopeful potential. Maybe it won’t in the end be for as many applications as it’s touted, but will have its local uses, like on a farmstead or in a factory or something like that.
Sounds like the other scheme that could produce electric at a cost of only $2,000 a KW, but the price was expected to go down in the future. Funny how these “fantastic” breakthroughs have very little detail and absolutely no economic information.
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