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Israeli-EU collaboration produces 'green' hydrogen fuel with solar energy
http://www.standwithus.com/news_post.asp?NPI=457 ^ | 9/11/05 | David Brinn

Posted on 09/29/2005 7:57:42 PM PDT by BlueSky194

The Weizmann Institute's Canadian Institute for the Energies and Applied Research, one of the most sophisticated solar research facilities in the world, which has a solar tower, a field of 64 mirrors and unique beam-down optics.

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Weizmann Institute of Science

Hydrogen, the most plentiful element in the universe, has long been viewed as an attractive candidate for becoming the pollution-free fuel of the future.

However, nearly all hydrogen fuel used today is produced by means of expensive processes that require combustion of polluting fossil fuels. Moreover, storing and transporting hydrogen is extremely difficult and costly.

In a breakthrough that has dramatic implications for energy use worldwide, Israeli researchers have shown that hydrogen fuel can be produced with the help of sunlight - propelling the dream forward of using hydrogen as a 'green' fuel.

The innovative solar technology developed at Weizmann Institute of Science that may offer an environmentally sound solution to the production of hydrogen fuel, has been successfully tested on a large scale, and also promises to facilitate the storage and transportation of hydrogen.

The chemical process behind the technology was originally developed at Weizmann on a scale of several kilowatts. It was then scaled up to 300 kilowatts in collaboration with scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, Institut de Science et de Genie des Materiaux et Procedes - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, and the ScanArc Plasma Technologies AB in Sweden. The project is supported by the European Union's FP5 program.

Results of the experiments were presented last month at the 2005 Solar World Congress of the International Solar Energy Society (ISES) in Orlando, Florida.

"After many years of basic research, we are pleased to see the scientific principles developed at the Institute validated by technological development," said Prof. Jacob Karni, Head of the Center for Energy Research at Weizmann.

"Our presentation was very well attended and received. Our colleagues and people involved in this field know our work very well," added Weizmann project leader Michael Epstein in an interview with ISRAEL21c.

The new solar technology developed by the Israelis and their European colleagues creates an easily storable intermediate energy source form from metal ore, such as zinc oxide.

Using Weizmann facilities, the team used sunlight to heat a metal ore, such as zinc oxide, to about 1,200° Celsius in the presence of charcoal. This split the ore, releasing oxygen and creating gaseous zinc, which was then condensed to a powder. The powder was later allowed to react with water, yielding hydrogen to be used as fuel and zinc oxide, which was recycled in the solar plant.

In recent experiments, the 300-kilowatt installation produced 45 kilograms of zinc powder from zinc oxide in one hour, exceeding projected goals.

The process generates no pollution, and the resultant zinc can be easily stored and transported, and converted to hydrogen on demand. In addition, the zinc can be used directly, for example, in zinc-air batteries, which serve as efficient converters of chemical to electrical energy. Thus, the method offers a way of storing solar energy in chemical form and releasing it as needed.

"Now we can store and transport solar energy efficiently as zinc, and then convert it to hydrogen whenever we need it," team member Christian Wieckert of the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland told New Scientist.

The concept of splitting metal ores with the help of sunlight has been under development over the course of several years at the Weizmann Institute's Canadian Institute for the Energies and Applied Research, one of the most sophisticated solar research facilities in the world, which has a solar tower, a field of 64 mirrors and unique beam-down optics.

"We get 2000 times the normal sunlight concentration," said Wieckert.

Weizmann scientists are currently investigating metal ores other than zinc oxide, as well as additional materials that may be used for efficient conversion of sunlight into storable energy.

"Over the next few months, there'll be a continuation of tests to cover different process parameters, and the project will finish at the end of this year. We'll have a final meeting with all the partners in the project," said project leader Epstein. "The duration of the project was four years, but we're actually planning to submit a continuation proposal to the next EU Commission."

Reaction to the Weizmann breakthrough has been enthusiastic to say the least.

"The Israelis may save the world if this technique for producing hydrogen pans out and proves practical," wrote Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan on his influential blog Informed Comment.

According to Epstein, the success of the recent experiments brings the approach closer to industrial use.

"We still need to demonstrate the whole process on a larger scale before it could go to commercialization. That can't be done by us, we've done the largest tests we can with our means. But hopefully, industrialists will take it over and demonstrate it if can work one magnitude larger. If that is shown, and the economics are viable, then I'm sure it could be commercialized," he said, adding that he foresaw the building of a commercial plant in six to eight years.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Israel; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: hydrogensolarcar
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To: dennisw; Cachelot; Yehuda; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; ...
If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

..........................................

I certainly hope the British academic boycott is readopted, and that the various Church divestment schemes pick up steam.

Last week, Israeli stem cell research shows umbilical cord blood can rejuvenate damaged heart tissue . Now this. Someone has to put a stop to it.

21 posted on 09/30/2005 5:46:05 AM PDT by SJackson (we are forced to live in a democracy... the process is frustratingly slow, HRH Gov Blagojevich)
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To: pillbox_girl

Metal ores require mining operations.
Charcoal requires logging operations.
Both of these operations require fuel.


22 posted on 09/30/2005 6:17:13 AM PDT by Frankss
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To: BlueSky194

Land prices in the sahara desert should be helped now...


23 posted on 09/30/2005 10:17:48 AM PDT by gobucks (http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/classics/students/Ribeiro/Laocoon.htm)
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To: Frankss
Metal ores require mining operations.
Charcoal requires logging operations.
Both of these operations require fuel.

But, even if they didn't, and we somehow magically had a free supply of charcoal and Zinc Oxide, this process would still be a bust. Once you strip out from this process the water, Zinc, and all the other tomfoolery, it's basically just a fancy way of burning Carbon to make Carbon Dioxide. We'd be ahead of the game both for energy independence and for the environment, if we just burned the coal directly and ignored this whole Zinc sourced Hydrogen boondoggle.

24 posted on 09/30/2005 11:45:34 AM PDT by pillbox_girl
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To: pillbox_girl; GSlob

Nice analyses. Some element other than carbon needs to be oxidized.


25 posted on 09/30/2005 6:44:53 PM PDT by neverdem (May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows that you're dead.)
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To: BlueSky194

I've read most of the comments up to this point, and I'm certainly no expert, but it seems to me that despite the inefficiencies and emissions, this might be a useful process.

Firstly, it allows solar power to be stored chemically at a central source. This infers that the process to produce the zinc "fuel" need not occur close to the point of usage. No transmission losses, as compared to solar electric generation. There are plenty of desert areas that could be used for plants throughout the world. Seems like hauling zinc powder around is a lot easier and safer than trying to haul compressed hydrogen gas.

Secondly, when most petroleum products are burned, the problem isn't so much the CO2 and CO, its all those byproducts that are the products of incomplete combustion, like sulfer compounds, heavy metals etc - these are difficult to deal with, especially at the level of individual cars.

Additionally, the CO or CO2 emissions would occur centrally, where they would be much easier to deal with - hopefully they could be harnessed for some other industrial use.

Lastly, it appears that the zinc is a catalyst in the process, meaning that it can be recycled and reused.

As many have pointed out, there isn't enough info here to make a decent judgement, and I think the weight issue could be a deal-breaker. However, from a pollution control standpoint, this seems to have some merit. I'd rather have a heavy box of zinc in my car than the high-pressure tanks of hydrogen gas that are expected to be required for a hydrogen vehicle. Concentrating the emissions at large production plants and leaving vehicles to run cleanly has some merit, IMHO.

Again, I'm no expert and, as many have pointed out, it would be best to compare the overall emissions, transportation costs and energy usage against the same for our existing petroleum and/or coal infrastructures.

One last thing that occurs to me - it sounds like a zinc-powder infrastructure would be far easier to implement using existing transporation infrastructure than a hydrogren gas infrastructure would be.

It would also be deliciously ironic if the Israelis found a way to sever the world's need for the Arab's oil.

Just my initial thoughts...


26 posted on 10/23/2005 8:27:11 AM PDT by babyface00
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To: babyface00

I've often wondered if our existing petroleum infrastructure as it is could even be created today if it didn't already exist.

Imagine the pushback:

We're going to suck raw crude oil out of the ground all over the world - in some of the most volatile parts of the world. That in itself is a messy and expensive proposition, at least until the well is up and running. Then, we'll pump it in pipeline networks to ports, load it onto huge dedicated tankers, haul it all over the world using oceans - risking leakage, spills etc.

Then, we offload it at ports, pipe it inland to dedicated refineries, which themselves are pretty messy and power-consuming.

In the case of gasoline, once we have this dangerous, volatile, flammable liquid distilled, we put it into trucks and haul it all over the nation along side commuter traffic on our highways and roadways to service stations scattered right in the midst of our populated areas. Then, we store this dangerous liquid in tanks underground - risking fire, explosion and leakage into our water systems.

If that weren't enough, we expect consumers to pump this flammable liquid themselves into their own portable holding tanks of their vehicles and then cart this liquid around as they go as fuel for transportation.

The vehicles themselves are subject to leakage, fire, etc in the case of poor maintenance or collisions. Refining doesn't remove a lot of the more dangerous aspects of the fuel, so even with our best technology, we're still spewing dangerous chemicals into our air, and the engines themselves collectively leak all sorts of nasty substances onto our roads, which leach into soil and groundwater.

I doubt that anyone would consider petroleum-based transporation today if we had to start from scratch.

I'm a car guy, so I'm not saying this from an enviro-wacko perspective.

Some of the alternative fuel ideas start to sound pretty attractive in comparison, even if they might cost a little more. That's not to say its worth tossing our existing system overboard on a whim, but if there was a better alternative in the long run, I'd be the first to say lets pursue it if its viable.

I don't necessarily believe that the C02 emmissions are "bad", like the global warming fanatics, but just because they're bad, doesn't mean they're necessarily good either. If we had the choice, I'd rather we weren't collectively spewing anything into the air that we don't have to.


27 posted on 10/23/2005 12:40:20 PM PDT by babyface00
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