Posted on 06/09/2022 3:38:58 AM PDT by dennisw
This medium releases 99.99 percent pure hydrogen, which could power electrical grids, hydrogen fuel cells, cars, or hydrogen-injected diesel trucks.
Former computer-chip manufacturing engineer Paul Smith founded Plasma Kinetics in 2008. The Arizona-based startup has developed “solid-state” hydrogen storage, essentially transferring the gas onto a proprietary film wound in many layers inside a canister. He says the tech could challenge batteries in both efficiency and environmental friendliness.
When unspooled and run past a laser—the film moves from one reel to another, like movie film through a projector—the solid-state storage medium releases 99.99 percent pure hydrogen, which could power electrical grids, hydrogen fuel cells, cars, or hydrogen-injected diesel trucks. Plasma Kinetics asserts that its storage system is 30 percent lighter, 7 percent smaller, and 17 percent less expensive than a lithium-ion battery per kilowatt-hour. Those claims have reportedly attracted capital from the likes of Toyota, though Smith declined to confirm any investments.
Due to these successes, Plasma Kinetics had to put its plans (and patents) on hold for nearly a decade because the Department of Defense wanted to gain a lead in applying Smith’s methodology to missile tech and other military applications. Now, the startup’s hydrogen storage tech may have the chance to challenge the battery business and the trillions of dollars sunk into it worldwide.
Hydrogen (H2) is most often produced by natural gas steam reformation and electrolysis of water. “Green” hydrogen is produced when wind and solar power provide electricity for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis. The hydrogen produced by these processes must be compressed or liquefied to achieve a small enough size for practical storage.
10 Questions With the Solid-State Battery Guru Hydrogen gas is commonly compressed to more than 2,000 psi, and in the case of fuel-cell cars like the Toyota Mirai, to as much as 10,000 psi. Multiple stages of compression and cooling are required to achieve these high pressures. Plasma Kinetics claims its process provides the same storage density as 5,000 psi compressed hydrogen gas but without compression—eliminating pumps, compressors, and chillers.
The company uses a light-sensitive, film-like “nano-photonic” material to absorb hydrogen, wound in thousands of layers inside a large canister. Each extremely thin layer has a lattice structure that binds hydrogen and prevents other elements from interfering with its absorption. The company’s process begins by connecting a hydrogen production “buffer tank” (into which electrolyzed or steam-reformed gas initially goes) to a hood with input and output pipes sitting atop a 20-foot container, which holds 70 canisters of its nano-photonic film.
On command, H2 is released from the buffer tank through the hood into the main container holding the 70 canisters. When a canister recognizes the presence of hydrogen gas, a valve inside opens, allowing gas to flow inside. The negatively charged nano-photonic film has a strong affinity for positively charged H2, absorbing it in minutes at simple atmospheric pressure.
“If you can provide 10 kilotons of hydrogen per hour to a Plasma Kinetics system, it can absorb all 10 kilotons,” Smith says. “It’s just a matter of how much you want to scale.”
Regardless of the source, the result is H2 stored in a solid state, according to Smith. The company anticipates 28 kg of H2 per cubic meter in 2023 without the need for pressure or energy to store the hydrogen. That could be useful in challenging batteries, a relatively dirty technology: Plasma Kinetics claims that its storage film and housings require no rare-earth elements. ---SNIP
Which means the oceans will rise and engulf the earth. We'll have so much water, we'll be trading cars/trucks for boats. The Mrna vaccines predicted this which is why our DNA will now allow us to evolve into having gills behind our ears and webbed feet. No, no thnak you hydrogen.
This has been around for quite a while.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rJBcXOoBipw
This is an episode of NOVA from 1979. At about 10:40 the concept of using a polymer is demonstrated.
If only we could find hydrogen in a more concentrated form, like a thick viscous liquid that we could refine it out of.
If you use atmospheric air as the oxygen source, there would be some NOx formation as a side product.
Don't worry - You'll be fine if you wear an asbestos raincoat.
/s
Second Law of Thermodynamics: You can't even break even.
True in all energy conversions but the energy may be in a more useful form.
I have two…one orange, one blue.
Gator after all…
CC
Probably destroy the Earth or something.
Again, I hope you’re joking too. Taking it from, then putting it back into water, won’t be much of a net change. If any at all.
Not economical yet. The vast majority of hydrogen is produced from natural gas
Hydrogen as a storage medium for use in automobiles and much more.
Yes, hydrogen can and will do that. Solar hydrocarbons will do that too eventually and those can also be sequestered or turned into carbon solids. It will all be part of the mix.
Burning hydrogen results in water. Water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas. What now?
Yes, but it has one major benefit. If we use the surplus solar or wind to create it (or create directly with solar), then it provides energy storage. Right now renewables are becoming economically worthless without storage. There are times when wind power is dumped. Colorado utilities now require wind turbines to be under their control so they can turn them off.
So then you’re ‘covered’, eh?
Too much carbon and energy waste. Natural gas has a lot more H to C (CH4). So that's what they use to produce most hydrogen.
Water vapor is a short term cycle so nature will get rid of it. But if you are concerned about that, we can make hydrogen by pulling water vapor from the air.
Use nuclear power plants to create electricity for refining water into hydrogen fuel via electrolysis.
He says the tech could challenge batteries in both efficiency and environmental friendliness.
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Oh? Where does the hydrogen come from? Currently it comes from hydrocarbon fossil fuel. In other words, you discard the carbon and store the hydrogen.
Hello? Discard carbon? “Environmental friendliness”?
The practical offshoot of this issue is that you have to waste lots of carbon. Burning carbon provides the majority of the energy provided by burning hydrocarbons. Why would you discard overt half of the energy contained in hydrocarbons?
Because you’re an idiot.
I don't know if I'd describe those methods as "great", but using wind and solar for electrolysis and technologies like the one described in the article for energy storage form a sort of ecosystem of offsetting deficiencies.
Solar and wind have a problem: the energy they collect and harness isn't available on demand. The energy is "free" (more accurately the energy is already present in the environment from the sun), but it needs to be stored to be most useful because the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow.
Electrolysis has a problem: physics. It takes more energy to split a water molecule than you can get out of using the resulting hydrogen and oxygen.
Storing the energy from an inefficient conversion is great, but it probably doesn't scale to an industrial level without a huge infrastructure investment and equipment footprint, much less scale to mass consumer use. That is not a particularly sexy problem to solve, but even in a niche industry use, it could certainly have a lot of value.
LOL, yes.
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