If someone could come up with a catalyst that when you run water over or through it, it would produce Hydrogen and Oxygen, you would have a true closed system that might come close to being a perpetual motion machine.
OPEC... 
would love that!
Posted on 11/17/2007 12:44:57 AM PST by neverdem
If the hoped-for hydrogen economy is ever to become a reality, researchers must devise efficient ways to produce and store the gas. That will require a series of breakthroughs that have been slow in coming. But researchers in the United States have hit upon a material for storing hydrogen that could be far better than the competition--just the sort of break hydrogen researchers are looking for.
Hydrogen has long been seen as a potentially green alternative to gasoline, which is produced from fossil fuels and gives off the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide when burned. When piped through a fuel cell, hydrogen molecules (H2) combine with oxygen, producing only electricity and water. At room temperature, however, hydrogen is a gas, which makes it difficult to store enough of it on board a car to drive long distances. The gas can be compressed in high-pressure tanks or cooled to a liquid at ultracold temperatures. But both of those strategies require large amounts of energy themselves.
As an alternative, researchers have been searching for materials that can hold large amounts of H2 and release it on demand. But so far the best performers, which are known as metal hydrides, hold only about 2% of their weight in hydrogen at room temperature, well below what is needed for a practical gas tank. Other materials can get up to 7% but require either high or low temperatures, and thus added energy and cost.
Last year, however, researchers led by Taner Yildirim at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, calculated that a material made from certain metals, such as titanium, and a small hydrocarbon called ethylene should form a stable complex that could bind up to 14% of its weight in hydrogen. Adam Phillips, a physicist and postdoc in the lab of Bellave Shivaram at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, decided to give the proposal a try.
Phillips used a laser to vaporize titanium in a gas of ethylene. The combined material settled out of the gas and on to a substrate to form a film. When Phillips added hydrogen at room temperature and weighed the result, he found the 14% added weight, just as predicted. After running a series of successful control studies, Phillips and Shivaram reported their new material on Monday at the International Symposium on Materials Issues in a Hydrogen Economy in Richmond, Virginia.
The new result is "extremely interesting," says Gholam-Abbas Nazri, a hydrogen storage expert at the General Motors Research and Development Center in Warren, Michigan. However, Nazri adds, "we have to be very cautious." There have been numerous false starts in the field before, he says. And researchers still must make the material in bulk, demonstrate that it works in that form, and show that it will release hydrogen as easily as it sops it up.
Even with those caveats, George Crabtree, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, says the result "is one of the most promising developments of the last few years."
Related site
I've tried explaining these thing to people and they don't want to hear it.
I have nothing against research and H2 will have it's niche in special situations I am sure. But it can't currently compete on a cost basis, energy balance basis, or as you stated - an energy density and ease of storage basis.
H2 isn't going to be ready to fuel cars on a widespread basis tomorrow, or next year, or next decade. So let's stop putting all our eggs in a "hope it works" basket and begin investing more in a sure thing ---- oil. We need more oil NOW. Exploration and domestic production should be a top priority. Our economy will suffer if we don't.
The only Hydrogen fuel that makes sense is when Hydrogen is combined to form Helium ie. fusion.
Let’s just concentrate on those cold fusion devices and see if a miracle happens and there really is some way to make cold fusion work.
Otherwise, we are stuck using Carbon-based Hydrogen-carrying fuel like oil and natural gas.
I don’t know why everyone is trying to re-create materials to hold Hydrogen when there are hundreds of chemicals that already hold Hydrogen for burning efficiently like oil and natural gas.
Find a way to make natural gas from Carbon and Hydrogen constituents. Find a way to make oil from basic Carbon and Hydrogen carrying materials.
Refinery technology has been around for over a hundred years. A tweak of the existing technology here and there and you can make natural gas from garbage or trees or anything.
Happens everyday all day long in nature.
“The only Hydrogen fuel that makes sense is when Hydrogen is combined to form Helium ie. fusion.
Let’s just concentrate on those cold fusion devices and see if a miracle happens and there really is some way to make cold fusion work.
Otherwise, we are stuck using Carbon-based Hydrogen-carrying fuel like oil and natural gas.”
Transportation fuel and electrical generation are 2 completely different things.
Even if we had fusion power, it still wouldn’t change the fact that gasoline-diesel-jet fuel would still be the only transportation fuel.
The only place I see hydrogen being part of the fuel equation is fuel cells on demand, bonded in liquid or solid form.
That’s in essence what they are trying to do here. In practice it would allow for replaceable and rechargeable modules for the hydrogen feedstock for the cell.
thanks for the ping, bmflr.
If someone could come up with a catalyst that when you run water over or through it, it would produce Hydrogen and Oxygen, you would have a true closed system that might come close to being a perpetual motion machine.
OPEC... would love that!
And everybody knows that titanium is plentyful and cheap.
We already have. It's called biogas.
Sustainable and efficient biohydrogen production via electrohydrogenesis That's a link to the abstract and pdf of the original article, a FReebie. I haven't read the pdf.
Regardless of the fact that I think anthropogenic climate change/global warming is bunk, shouldn't we demand energy independence? Weren't tar sands and shale oil supposed to be viable at $70 per barrel of oil? I don't care how we get the energy that we need, whether it's ANWAR, offshore oil or methane clathrates, whatever. IMHO, anything else is better than supporting the likes of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, etc., in the fungible oil market.
But that would make too much sense as it would eliminate the "issue" and both sides would have to re-examine their justifications for existence.
I agree completely. Let's start building burner nuclear plants, re-start the breeder reactor programs, start pouring funding into Bussard's fusion breakthrough, and accessing all the energy we need, from whatever source. I'd be willing to pay an extra $1/gallon gas tax if the money were specified to go ONLY to research and implementation of new sources of energy.
I agree 100%. We will get our money back when the “oil sheikhs” become “sand sheikhs” with nothing to sell but sand and they have to purchase food from us. We can use the food money to fund missionaries in Arabia (the anti-Madrassa). Hoo Yah!
At the root, any energy use is still, well energy use. It is still a large scale energy release from one point in the environment into another point.
As Laura Ingraham says, ‘an area of purple agreement’
Fred Thompson needs to take this tack bigtime.
I know I pumped it. (the hydrogen too! Which will never be practical in automobiles)
“If someone could come up with a catalyst that when you run water over or through it, it would produce Hydrogen and Oxygen, you would have a true closed system that might come close to being a perpetual motion machine.”
It wouldn’t ‘come close’ to being a perpetual motion machine, it would be a perpetual motion machine.
“As Laura Ingraham says, ‘an area of purple agreement’
Fred Thompson needs to take this tack bigtime.”
And all the more reason not to vote for Fred. Anyone who gives lip service (like Bush) to the buzzwords “Alternative Energy” and “Global Warming” accomplishes nothing but give the left more political power.
When a Conservatives speaks of Global Warming, alternatives and such, the hidden agenda is nuclear power.
When a Leftist speaks of Global Warming, alternatives and such, the hidden agenda is carbon tax and socialism.
THE AGENDA NEVER INVOLES ACTUALLY SOLVING THE NONEXISTANT PROBLEM!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.