Posted on 08/02/2002 8:51:16 PM PDT by Rebelbase
Aaron and Rosie Winters lived in a dirt house — okay, a hole — near Las Vegas. One day in 1881, a visiting prospector told them about a valuable white mineral he was in search of. He described a simple chemical preparation for the ore that, if ignited, would burn green, the telltale flame of a borate compound. Aaron thought he knew where such a mineral could be found but kept it to himself until the prospector left. The next day, he set out for Death Valley, retrieved a sample, performed the test, and exclaimed, "She burns green, Rosie. We're rich!"
Preston Chiaro, the CEO of U.S. Borax, confesses that the story flashed through his mind as he went along on Car and Driver's exclusive — nay, historic — road test of DaimlerChrysler's Natrium, a Ballard/ Xcellsis fuel-cell vehicle powered by sodium borohydride (NaBH4), derived from one of his company's products. If the Natrium's borax-based technology pans out, he will be sitting on the most valuable pile of white powder north of Colombia.
Like so many of the magazine's endeavors, our Natrium test ran counter to the better judgment of those involved: more than 30 miles round trip from Furnace Creek in Death Valley to Badwater (at 282 feet below sea level) in an experimental vehicle — a mule, if you will — with radical technology, in a region where stranded visitors have been compelled to drink their own urine.
To everyone's giddy relief, the Natrium ran, and ran beautifully — which is amazing when you consider that the fuel is elusive hydrogen stored in a mixture of 75-percent water and 25-percent glorified soap powder. The only tailpipe emission is water, and the thing has more tubes, pumps, and filters than the back room of SeaWorld.
At the heart of the Natrium (natrium is Latin for "sodium") is the Hydrogen on Demand fuel system built by Millennium Cell of Eatontown, New Jersey, whose founder, chemist Steven Amendola, rediscovered the joys of sodium borohydride in the early 1990s. The substance was briefly tested as a rocket propellant in the 1940s, but it's chiefly used today as a whitener for certain kinds of paper. It's also a world-class reducing agent and is used in college chem labs everywhere to precipitate compounds out of solution. It's this property the Millennium Cell system exploits.
Because of the affinity of boron-and-hydrogen compounds for oxygen, the solution, when passed over a catalyst made of ruthenium, eagerly trades away not only its own hydrogen but also some of the water's hydrogen. The reaction is exothermic, meaning it gives off heat when releasing the hydrogen. And unlike other hydrogen supply systems, Millennium Cell's isn't predicated on energy-gobbling processes such as cryogenic liquefaction, compression, or the reforming of petroleum, at least at the point of sale, although the fuel-making process is still fairly primitive and eats watts and joules as if they were going out of style.
Millennium Cell's Hydrogen on Demand gadget, sure to baffle the boys down at Jiffy Lube. The hydrogen-laced sodium borohydride is about as easy to handle as gasoline, but it's nonflammable and nonexplosive. That said, it's not as benign as soapy water, either. You wouldn't want to bathe in it any more than you'd bathe in gasoline.
The liberated hydrogen flow, nicely damp — fuel cells are happiest with humidity at about 80 percent — is pumped to 132 psi, passed through a heat exchanger, and married with oxygen drawn from the atmosphere before it hits the fuel cell. The fuel cell delivers electricity to drive the Natrium's 35kW (47 hp) Siemens AC motor and recharge its 40kWh lithium ion battery, with help from its regenerative braking system.
47 horsepower is how much in mule power?
A chemist's answer: "Na"
Which will happen the second any alternative provides meaningful competion.
Not quite!
With ANY carbon based fuel, whether it's fossil based or renewable, you still have the problem of CO & CO2 emissions. The "best" carbon based fuel would be methane (CH4) because it has the highest ratio of hydrogen to carbon (4/12 or .333). The idea is to get that carbon component down to zero.
By the way, I read your link and I miss the point. All Millennium Cell has done is develop a little boron chemistry to store hydrogen a little more safely. This may be a good thing, but still doesn't solve the problem of where they get the hydrogen in the first place. 125
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