Hydrogen fuel using only water and sunlight

Another one here:

www.sciencedaily.com...

Emory University chemists have developed the most potent homogeneous catalyst known for water oxidation, considered a crucial component for generating clean hydrogen fuel using only water and sunlight.

I find these discoverys facinating and i just hope they will
arrive SOOOOON. To the public that is..

I find these Discoveries fascinatiing as well.

If this becomes a True Reality where everyoine could have access, it could mean Hydrogen Fuel could become a Cheap Reality and not just a Pipe Dream.. Hydrogen could be made at home or at the place where you work without having to use a lot of energy to produce your own fuel..

The down side is, If it did become a reality I doubt we could have access. The Governments and Fuel Companies will want to have a peice of it so there goes my hope of Cheap, Do it Yourself, Fuel. They'd have to control it..

Originally posted by Damian-007
I find these Discoveries fascinatiing as well.

If this becomes a True Reality where everyoine could have access, it could mean Hydrogen Fuel could become a Cheap Reality and not just a Pipe Dream.. Hydrogen could be made at home or at the place where you work without having to use a lot of energy to produce your own fuel..

The down side is, If it did become a reality I doubt we could have access. The Governments and Fuel Companies will want to have a peice of it so there goes my hope of Cheap, Do it Yourself, Fuel. They'd have to control it..

Only if we let them..
Who got the upper hand, 6billion ppl or 150ish gvmts...Its all about the word. They cant kill us all you know...Who would they control then?
The power IS in the ppl, we just dont have the guts to use it. LOL

[edit on 18-3-2010 by Miccey]

reply to post by Miccey


Yeah the replacement of carbon-based photosynthesis with nonorganic --

If this works it could spread like wildfire -- just as the carbon-based life on earth is destroyed.... The brain of Earth is being replaced with silica soy!!

Originally posted by drew hempel
reply to post by Miccey

 

Yeah the replacement of carbon-based photosynthesis with nonorganic --

If this works it could spread like wildfire -- just as the carbon-based life on earth is destroyed.... The brain of Earth is being replaced with silica soy!!

What?


-Everyone else

Seems like a nice step forward if it works. I doubt we are going to be making hydrogen at home even if this does work. I think most people are just going to want the electric companies to produce hydrogen, burn it and and send electricity to their homes like usual, and probably wont mind if it cost about the same. Won't need expensive infrastructure beyond the cost of the cost of converting the power stations to burn hydrogen and building the hydrogen production plants next to it. As opposed to some hydrogen delivery system for the Bloom Box or whatever. That seems to me like the quickest way to get it up and running. Companies get to use their current tech and you don't have to force people to change their habits. Just conjecture on my part though.

Something like this is not going to be cheap. Not at first. Only the energy companies are going to invest in it. Why wouldn't they? You know how much they spend looking for new sources oil every year? Anyway once they get it up and running they should be producing electricity for almost free as far as cost of materials is concerned. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way if their overhead is minor they would still make huge profits by selling the energy cheap enough that to most people there would be little point in messing with "scary exploding gas". Just a thought.

[edit on 18-3-2010 by garritynet]

There was a recent thread about the MIT artificial photosynthesis process that talked about this whole field. Given that your avaerage US home uses between 24-31kwh of electricity daily:

The theoretical yield of hydrogen from water electrolysis is roughly 0.84lbs of H2 per gallon of water.

That equates to roughly 168cu ft of H2 per gallon of water.

Your typical (first generation) PEM (proton exchange membrane) type fuel cell will require between 25 and 27cu ft of H2 to produce 1kw of electricity for one hour (1kwh). Other fuel cell architectures, possibly the BloomBox, may require less but you can buy PEM cell systems today that meet these criteria.

That means that theoretically, in rough numbers, one gallon of water could produce enough hydrogen to generate 1kW of electricity for 6.5 hrs. Your average American home, therefore, would use about 4gal of water per day --- or about two toilet flushes.

Yea, yea I know... we're working from a maximum H2 yield from water and CONVENTIONAL electrolysis is expensive. But other approaches to electrolysis (possibly this one) are far more efficient (microbial catalytic electrolysis for example). Also, the 25-27scf per kW H2 requirement is for first generation fuel cells.

And as far as the concern about using up water goes, please keep in mind that the fuel cells recombine hydrogen and oxygen (in the air) to produce water.

This technology and the BloomBox may not be the answer but it is clearly heading in the right direction. These are not flash-in-the-pan ideas but rather the fruits of well over 25yrs of R&D.

hydrogen fuel cant be stored

the reason it isnt being used is because of that fact, all hydrogen storage systems leak.

reply to post by tigpoppa


Really? Seems you know something that armies of scientists and engineers don't and have ignored for decades. Seems quite feasible to me and many others that Hydrogen can be stored. Care to elaborate your point?

Originally posted by tigpoppa
hydrogen fuel cant be stored

the reason it isnt being used is because of that fact, all hydrogen storage systems leak.

Indeed. I can go down the street to a cryonics company and buy a tank of H2 right now. I am sure it might leak a tiny bit through the pipe threading, but I will use it up a whole lot faster than it will leak out.

All water delivery systems leak too but we get water to our homes just fine.

Like I said before having the electric companies make the electricity for us and deliver it using the existent power grid is the cheapest way and it doesn't challange the status quo. Everyone would just start selling electric cars and there would never be an issue with transporting hydrogen. Hydrogen will be generated as needed and burned soon after. Anything else that might happen, would come later.

I wonder how hard it would be for Honda to set up one of those Natural Gas Honda Civics, they don't sell them in my state so I've never seen the engine up close, to run off of hydrogen? Any ideas?

Oh snap! They have their apparant second generation of hydrogen fuel cell cars ready for road testing. Guess they are way ahead of me.

automobiles.honda.com...

[edit on 19-3-2010 by garritynet]

Do you know how explosive pure hydrogen is? What if terrorists got hold of this technology? We can't just let people make their own energy. We need to tightly control energy usage under the careful observation of government regulated corporations. That's the only way we can be safe and secure in the post-9/11 world.

[edit on 19-3-2010 by Crito]

That means that theoretically, in rough numbers, one gallon of water could produce enough hydrogen to generate 1kW of electricity for 6.5 hrs. Your average American home, therefore, would use about 4gal of water per day --- or about two toilet flushes.

But you could recycle it indefinably in a home system just by taking the output from a fuel cell and returning it to the feed tank of the system.
or it could be used for drinking water as it would be pure water without any pollution.

Even using the hydrogen in a car you could return the water to a tank and use it for drinking water.
How about a cold water tap in your car, the water from the fuel cell cooled by a small amount of power from the fuel cell and run to a tap that you could fill your drinking glass from.