Posted on 05/04/2002 9:02:32 PM PDT by PeaceBeWithYou
Chrysler's concept van gives new meaning to "clean fuel."
by Dan Carney
Borax may prove useful in a lot more than laundry detergent. DaimlerChrysler engineers believe a variant of the innocuous white powder provides a safe, compact way to contain hydrogen. The lack of such storage for the notoriously flammable gas has been a key obstacle to the development of fuel-cell-powered cars. Borax's first performance is in a concept minivan called the Chrysler Town & Country Natrium (Latin for sodium, an element in borax).
A fairly simple chemical process joins borax and hydrogen in a manner that renders the gas nonflammable. When mixed with water in the Natrium's fuel system, this sodium borohydride powder produces free hydrogen for the fuel cell (see chart). Unlike other alternative fuel systems, such as those using methanol and gasoline, the Natrium produces no pollution and no carbon dioxide.
Better yet, the powder holds more hydrogen than the most densely compressed air tank. The prototype van can drive 300 miles on a tank of fuel—much farther than the typical fuel cell vehicle. The same tank of hydrogen compressed by conventional means would fill most of the van's cargo area.
The by-products of this process are water and sodium borate—basically the same stuff as in soap. After use, the spent powder goes into a storage tank. DaimlerChrysler envisions gas station pumps that would exchange sodium borohydride for spent sodium borate. Tankers would resupply stations with the hydrogen-carrying powder and return the used stuff to the refinery.
Hydrogen would be added in a chemical plant. And in a pinch, says Tom Moore, vice president of technical affairs, "You could wash your hands with the residue."
The Chrysler Town & Country Natrium packages its power system under the van's floor. It uses sodium borohydride powder to carry hydrogen in a nonflammable form. To convert that powder to useable fuel water with sodium borohydride suspended in it is passed over a catalyst made of the chemical element ruthenium. The bonds that hold boron and hydrogen together in this mixture are broken and the atoms are rearranged into sodium borate, and the free hydrogen that powers the vehicle.
Wouldn't take too much to convert a gasoline burner in to a hydrogen burner. Gas or oil fired power plants, would be a snap as well, with a gradual phase in of fuel cells.
The beauty part of this is that the largest deposit of "Borax" is in the U.S. Southwest and could supply us well into the next century without recycling, thus making us independent from OPEC.
Tibet, and Asia are the next largest deposits, but they are small comparatively.
As for rehydrogenation, that could be done over time with solar, wind, geothermal, or other methods at our leisure.
Hope the earth goo gang won't stomp it down & put it up on their shelf next to all the other great ideas.
Now maybe we can use crude for all the other wonderful things it's good for{medicines, lubes & other great stuff more profitable than burning it wastefully as fuel}.
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There is nothing here suggesting hydrogen provided by nature. What is suggested is that borates would relieve the problem of highly compressed hydrogen in automobiles. There's a big difference.
check this link on "Powerballs"
http://www.powerball.net/concept/index.shtml
This site has been around for at least 2 years.
They may actually be the source of the Chrysler fuel.
Oh really? Sorry it took me a while to stop laughing at your post.
You might change your mind with a little research.
BORAX:
Chemistry: Na2B4O7 -10H2O, Hydrated sodium borate.
Class: Carbonates
Subclass: Borates
Uses: an ore of boron and as a source of borax (a cleaning agent and useful industrial chemical)
Borax is a complex borate mineral that is found in playa lakes and other evaporite deposits. The basic structure of borax contains chains of interlocking BO2(OH) triangles and BO3(OH) tetrahedrons bonded to chains of sodium and water octahedrons. Most old mineral specimens of borax are chalky white due to a chemical reaction from dehydration. They have actually altered (at least on their surface) to the mineral tincalconite, Na2 B4O7-5H2O, with the loss of water. This kind of alteration from one mineral to another leaves the original shape of the crystal. Minerologists refer to this as a pseudomorph, or "fake shape", because the tincalconite has the crystal shape of the predecessing borax.
Borax is directly deposited in arid regions from the evaporation of water in intermittent lakes called playas. The playas form only during rainy seasons due to runoff from adjacent mountains. The runoff is rich in the element boron and is highly concentrated by evaporation in the arid climate. Eventually the concentration is so great that crystals of borax and other boron minerals form.
Na2B4O7 -10H2O
Looks like there are 10 H2's in there to me. Even the dehydrated ore, tincalconite, has 5 H2's.
Here's a link to some folks that have already converted a LPG Crown Vic to burn the hydrogen produced, and they also have a working fuel cell vehicle. Link to Milleniumcell FAQ
It's probably already happened.
This reflects a misunderstanding of hydrogen technology. In effect, hydrogen replaces batteries in automobiles. It stores energy for use in vehicles. It is not provided in usable form by nature.
Nature does not provide hydrogen for free. Of course, there's lots of water (H20). But there, the hydrogen is bonded to the oxygen molecule.
IT TAKES ENERGY TO GET THE BURNABLE HYDROGEN OUT OF WATER. IN FACT, IT TAKES MORE ENERGY TO EXTRACT HYDROGEN FROM WATER THAN CAN BE RECOVERED FROM THE HYDROGEN.
Once the hydrogen is extracted from the water, it would have to be bonded with the borax. This would provide the storable form of hydrogen that could be used in cars. This is emphatically not "provided by nature". It is at least two entirely artifical and very expensive processes away from the H in H20.
Most of the greens just do not understand this point. They seem to think that somehow we just get some water and out comes hydrogen. No, we have to spend energy to get the hydrogen. Where does the energy come from? Given the constraints of today's technology, it will have to come from fossil fuels, hydro power and fission. Very little will come from renewable sources until that market (renewables) sees considerable cost reductions in producing energy.
That said, hydrogen may turn out to be a very very cool mobile battery. Since most driving occurs in dense population areas, and those are the most polluted air basins, it makes some sense to "move" the pollution from the cities to the places where fossil fuels are burned to produce hydrogen. And, with hydrogen, we avoid all the disposal problems associated with the heavy metals in traditional batteries. Big advantages.
But hydrogen technology is not a free, or even a low cost, energy source.
The real danger is that, as this technology becomes economically feasible (15-20 years), the greens will abandon it. This is likely, because they always seem to like approaches to energy that are not yet feasible. Why? They don't like mankind to use energy because that fuels western civilization and they are opposed to western civilization.
I don't know which is true but if it is the first then the hydrogen has to come from somewhere to be added to the Borax.
If it is the latter then once the hydrogen has been used the Borax has to be reinjected with it to "recycle" it. Again, the hydrogen has to come from somewhere.
So you still need a large energy source to provide the demand for hydrogen.
OK, I'll post it here for you.
The Hydrogen on Demand™ System
Millennium Cell has devised a compact and portable way to store hydrogen (H2) for many practical purposes including propelling a car. It is based on liquid water and salt solutions at room temperature, is easily accessed without energy input, is stable in air, is not too heavy, and not too big.
The Millennium Cell Hydrogen on Demand™ generator uses the following chemical reaction.
NaBH4 + 2 H2O (cat—›) 4 H2 + NaBO2
Sodium borohydride (NaBH4), a salt, is dissolved in water where it stays until gaseous hydrogen (H2) is needed. This is the left side of the reaction. When H2 is desired, the NaBH4 solution is pumped over a catalyst. This is the arrow in the center of the reaction marked "cat". The H2 gas comes out, and leaves behind sodium borate (NaBO2), another salt, which remains dissolved in water. This is the right side of the reaction. To stop the left to right progression of the H2 generation reaction, the pump stops and the solution is kept from the catalyst. Without the catalyst, the H2 generation does not occur.
Some important points about the above chemistry:
The solution of borohydride dissolved in water is non-flammable.
The reaction is easily controlled via the catalyst and reactor configuration.
Half of the hydrogen comes from the borohydride. The other half comes from water.
The catalyst can be reused many times.
Sodium borate is a common, non-toxic household item; it is used in detergents.
Sodium borate can be recycled into new sodium borohydride. These points are all critical if the goal is to have a practical transportation fuel. Most important is the idea that on board a car, borohydride fuel will be stored in a tank just like the ones cars use today. The tank can be made out of plastic, molded to match the shape of an automobile chassis, and will be essentially the same size as the standard gas tank. The rest of the system is reasonably compact. According to the ideas discussed above the fuel needs to be in contact with the catalyst. To accomplish this task in a car the fuel is pumped to a chamber containing the catalyst. The chamber releases all of the H2 from the borohydride in one pass, enough to power the car, and the remaining borate goes to a spent fuel tank. When H2 is no longer desired, the pump is shut off, isolating the catalyst from the fuel. By turning the pump on and off, the hydrogen flow is easily controlled. Increasing and decreasing the rate of pumping can also affect a much finer control of the H2 generation rate.
While cars are very interesting, Hydrogen on Demand™ can also be employed in off board applications. Small systems have been designed which do not even require pumps, using only pressure differences to move fuel to and away from a fixed catalyst. All in all, Hydrogen on Demand™ is proving to be a very flexible method of supplying hydrogen to fuel cells and engines of various sizes, without any emissions.
Something else has to make the hydrogen.
Requires swapping out fuel tanks when empty, not to useful.
The picture is much clearer now, thanks ;-)
It is interesting half the hydrogen comes from the water. I wonder how much smaller the spent "fuel" volume/weight is.
The "fuel" still has to be recycled (how much borax is around and what do you do with the spent material if you don't?). That will still take large amounts of energy but it still sounds good. Build some large nuclear reactors in some distant place and recycle it continuously there. If we'd do that our dependency on oil would be gone. I'd love to see that… I'll believe it when I see it…
Thanks for the information. I was unaware of that particular problem.
Hydrogen enbrittlement has been solved, the process called RVS, was named after the person that discovered it. It was discovered coincidentaly by the Soviets in the 1980's when drilling deep oil wells and they stopped wearing out their drill heads. Upon investigation they discovered that the iron in the hardened steel had been bonded with the ferrosilicates they had drilled through. As an added benefit it also reduced the friction, and is self healing for both defects in the metal and for wear of the metal.
See Ferrosilicates via the RVS process. for more information on it.
If you follow the link above, they have a product that you can add to just about any steel or iron surfaces that are subject to wear and friction. I've been thinking of adding it to my vehicles as any decrease in friction is an increase in efficiency and MPG's.
It would be advisable to install a stainless steel exhaust system on a hydrogen burner, since steam makes them rust out pretty quick. Although it might be possible to extend the range of the vehicle if you condensed it and add it back to the fuel tank.
Seems their design research needs more awareness.
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