Coming Soon: $20 'Solar to Hydrogen' Conversion System

Coming Soon: $20 'Solar to Hydrogen' Conversion System

cleantechnica.com

Sun Catalytix, an American company founded by a MIT professor, is working on a low-cost ‘solar to hydrogen’ power system and plans to launch it within the next 18 months. The product which was announced about two years ago has attracted millions of dollars in investment from the Indian industrial giant Tata.

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The title is a little deceptive...
The final cost of the entire system would be higher than $20, owing to the costs of solar panels, storage equipment and fuel cell. But the cost of hydrogen generation would be much cheaper than the conventional technology which costs up to $12,000 per Kw today...

Still given all that we might finally be on the cusp of affordable hydrogen power systems

cleantechnica.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by DaddyBare


So , using solar power, to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen , then recombining them to produce electricity? The efficiency of this method will, if allowed to flourish to its full potential, will be good news to those who simply cannot afford a similarly powerful supply of gas, coal, or oil. This is fantastic news! Hopefully this technology will be procured by charities working in financialy less developed nations, as well as by private citizens and governments.
Thank you DaddyBare for bringing this to my attention !

That's cool. Solar to hydrogen isn't bs renewable energies like electric (as long as we power plants with coal), today's hydrogen (also fueled by coal), or biofuel from corn (powered by the nitrogen inputs which come from petroleum).

reply to post by TrueBrit


What could be the greatest cost cutting measure is simply cutting out the big oil companies...
if you remember their plan was to create Hydrogen from petroleum byproducts then offer them through their own service stations...

Well if this works it solves the distribution problem and make you your own supplier

I'm really ignorant about all this. isn't hydrogen explosive? Why would anyone want to convert from solar to hydrogen?
Isn't solar the cleanest energy you can get?

reply to post by missvicky


Yes, hydrogen is explosive just like gasoline. It's ignited in the cylinder in a controlled explosion which moves the pistons that convert linear movement to rotary movement, which makes your tires turn.

Hydrogen is harder to store since you'll need high pressure tanks with an absorber material that can survive an accident and hold sufficient quantities of gas. Natural gas vehicles need large pressure tanks.

Sun energy to charge batteries at home and then recharge you vehicle at home is the alternative, but high power density batteries are expensive, heavy and use exotic materials.

reply to post by missvicky


the why is rather complicated but I'll try...

Hydrogen can be used as a replacement for gasoline in modified engines. with the added bennie that the only exhaust from burning this as a fuel, is water...

Also if you think about the ingredients of water H2O and if you can come up with an efficient means to separate the Hydrogen from the Oxygen molecules... then you really do have a renewable energy source...water...
In Fuel Cells the process of separating H from O has the very pleasant side effect of creating electricity...

get it now???

anyone can build a Solar/ HHO system. but the solar will cost more than 20 bucks...lol

you are either going to want to use a titanium substrate anode material or a platinum ribbon configuration in your production cell, and you aint gonna buy any of those components for no 20 bucks either.

in other words its bull#....hahahaha

and by the way? 316L stainless steel oxidizes rapidly and produces unwanted toxins, but makes one hell of a HHO torch if you need one

reply to post by aliengenes


Professor Daniel Nocera, however, thought of a more natural way to achieve the same results. The system uses cobalt phosphate-based catalyst which operates at atmospheric pressure which is significantly advantageous when compared to the conventional catalysts. Especially in terms of cost!

It's not as far fetched as you'd think... there are some real biggies in business world besides Tata Group that are heavily vested in this project BP in TataBP Solar are there... and in the case of TataBP... will probably be the company that produces the rest of this system for market

Thanks everyone for your replies about hydrogen being a more pleasant energy source. but I still get that feeling in my gut that someone is trying to con me. OK, hydrogen may be clean, may help out with other resources, but it's dangerous. Hello, Space shuttle. Can anyone imagine the results of traffic accidents from hydrogen fueled cars? I still rather like solar powered anything.

Originally posted by missvicky
Thanks everyone for your replies about hydrogen being a more pleasant energy source. but I still get that feeling in my gut that someone is trying to con me. OK, hydrogen may be clean, may help out with other resources, but it's dangerous. Hello, Space shuttle. Can anyone imagine the results of traffic accidents from hydrogen fueled cars? I still rather like solar powered anything.

you only have to store the hydrogen in hydride tanks. watch this video and you'll better understand.
www.youtube.com...

reply to post by missvicky


Solar is clean, but heres the thing. This new technique has all the benifits of both energy systems . For example, solar power being used to split oxygen and hydrogen during the night, gives you access to electricity being created when those atoms are recombined. During the day that solar power can be harnessed directly into the electricity supply for the building, so 24 hour active buildings need not skimp at night just because its dark out. Another thing is this, hydrogen power production only gives off steam vapour as a by product.
Furthermore, in response to the poster who was talking about VEHICLE energy needs, yes, modern car hydro cells require shielding from impact and damage and so on, but in general a house is less prone to these problems than a car, being some significant percent less likely to be impacted in a dangerous manner. Plus, the hydrogen in THIS power plant need not be under the same enormous preasure, as specified in the article. The real benifit is the raw materials one can use to fuel this thing. Its just water, any water. Sea water, rain water, bottled water, puddles, water from a stream , a lake, a bucket in the yard, an underground condenser ( thats posh for a hole in the ground with a plastic sheet over the top and a jar in the bottom) .
In response to the suggestion that storing hydrogen is dangerous , well yes, but in comparison to say natural gas mains, the resultant explosion from any accident involving one of these power plants wouldnt be nearly as dangerous as a gas main explosion, for one simple reason. In these machines, a limited supply of hydrogen can be stored at any one time, and there is no main attached to it. No large scale supply. So if it explodes, it is only the relatively small amount which can detonate. However, with a natural gas main, you have the supply in the house, and the supply in the pipe which feeds the house, and any other house in the street which is connected to the gas main. In some circumstances that can lead to cascading explosions, especialy in smaller less economicaly developed nations, where saftey concerns are outweighed by cost effectiveness.
I would rather have a small amount of flammable hydrogen , than a supply of natural gas from a mains supply by a long way!

reply to post by DaddyBare


I hear a lot of talk about cheap HHO, it's not happening! I know it's not cause I built my own and run a 2.5kw electrical generator with it and have 1.9kws surplus after the HHO generator takes it's 600 watts. Have a pic, this is the Sodium Hydroxide with 316ss electrodes unit I built.



One of the major problems with HHO is the separation of H2 and O2, well I fixed that, so I have two collection lines and can mix the gases at whatever ratio I want which is usualy 1:3 max, so I don't melt the heads on the electrical generator system. My outbound flow rate is approx. 195 cc's per second H2 and that comes from 5Vdc at about 120amps.

This particular unit cost about $2000 to build from scratch. It's all acrylic and stainless steel. I learned a lot from mixing metals with these kinds of currents as well as the required electrolyte ratios and electrode spacing. More importantly, I developed a way to move electrons and ions without moving actual gases.

I have plans to increase the area of the electrodes and drop the voltage/current to 2vdc@300amps. She bubbles like a banshee screams! Some people say it can't be done, some people just talk about doing it and then there are other people that actually do the work, like me.

Cheers - Dave

PS. Forgot to mention, this is a variable output unit, I regulate the voltage and current to change the flow rates. I could take it up to 10 volts at 250amps or 12 volts at about 300 amps (or higher), change the electrolyte ratio and start producing H2 in the range of half a litre to a litre per second. This has been designed as an H2 on-demand system.

Originally posted by missvicky
Thanks everyone for your replies about hydrogen being a more pleasant energy source. but I still get that feeling in my gut that someone is trying to con me. OK, hydrogen may be clean, may help out with other resources, but it's dangerous. Hello, Space shuttle. Can anyone imagine the results of traffic accidents from hydrogen fueled cars? I still rather like solar powered anything.

Hydrogen is actually very safe, even though it is so combustible. A tank rupture is unlikely because tech these days for high pressure vessels is very very good. Hydrogen is used all the time. You don't hear about daily hydrogen explosions, though. Even if a rupture were to occur, the hydrogen would burn off in one collasal BANG. Hydrogen is not a slow burner. It burns very hot, very fast (millisecond burn times), and leaves steam as a byproduct.

As for the space shuttle explosion.. That was not just hydrogen. The solid rocket boosters were still attached and those things are incredibly dangerous. Not to mention the fact the the main fuel tank if not exactly hardened and high velocity impacts and was much much much larger than a car sized tank would need to be.

As far as solar energy goes, I tend to agree that hydrogen is the best storage medium found so far for storing daytime energy for nighttime use.

yes the system may work but you will likely have to triple the amount of solar panels on your roof just to get 24 hours power.(winter use taking into account cloud cover) i do not have the roof area for the amount of solar panels needed.

This increase in the amount of solar panels and the fuel cell will put it out of the price range of most people.

A few people that live in high wind areas might be able to use a hybrid system because during storms they would likely get increased wind.

All i see hear is another pipe dream by the idiots(global warmers) that think we can go to pure wind and solar to power everything.
These are the same idiots that try to make laws mandating the imposable.

reply to post by bobs_uruncle


sodium hydroxide will quickly eat up your plate design , because of the expanded/screen stainless you're using. and thats most likely why you're using up too much energy.

you need to build a wet dry cell from solid plate in a triangle configuration and port the gas exit at the top center without drilling any holes through the plates. the gas must quickly escape from the plates or they will end up boiling dry, thus creating higher amperage and voltage drain, not including overheating.

spend a little money and build you a titanium substrate cell, they don't oxidize the material and produce a purer hydrogen with greater volume

reply to post by aliengenes


I have gone to a carbon sputtered design using the same kind of square plates to increase the surface area, I know where you are going with the traingular plates in the equalization of current across area. But, seems to be working quite well the way it is. I reverse the current flow once per day, along with the collectors and that is working nicely also. I also use a common feed now for the sodium hydroxide so that it fills all the cells to the same level at the same time and maintains liquid level height, it's a bottom feed system that I designed for industrial hydroponics years ago. A titanium or platinum plate system is nice but considerably more expensive than sputtered carbon on copper as I was looking for an inexpensive production version. Since the sodium hydroxide solution is very mild I have had no pitting or corrosion in the new plates and they have been in service for 6 months.

Thanks for the comment, eventually we'll get to a viable solution if we all open source the technology we develop.

Cheers - Dave

The design pertains to powering a home's electricity needs. The solar during the day and the excess stored as oxygen and hydrogen which would be used to power a fuel cell which produces electricity.

In the car,
You would again use the hydrogen to power a fuel cell in an automobile, which creates electricity for the car's electric motors.

Remember that Gasoline is highly combustible as well and we drive around daily with a multi-gallon tank of it directly behind us in our automobiles.

Google the military's Fuel Air bombs to provide an example of gasoline's explosive power.

I am not sure the Solar to Hydrogen is the best solution. You loose energy when you convert solar to electric , then you loose energy when converting electric to hydrogen. Then, the stability of hydrogen is not very good. Hydrogen has a very small molecule, therefore the storage is not great either as it is simply.. evaporating from the hydrogen tank - so more risks associated with it.Being so light, the hydrogen also takes a lot of space, so you would travel with a big risky tank in your car for just a few teens of miles.

If I was to invest in solving this problem I would push on developing super-batteries , based on super-capacitors. We have the tech to create super-batteries able to store 10 times the electricity of your led battery , it is just that finding ways to put this into productions costs loads of money.. and as long as petrol is cheap, money for things like this will not really come..

Another cheap way to store energy would be by compressing air into tanks . This compressed air can be used directly on a light engine.. or generator. This is definitely better than classical batteries as you can refill the air-tank without spoiling the battery.

In the end - i have the feeling that high petrol price will not be all that bad! It will stimulate the creativity and imagination of people, then alternative solutions will be hard to stop. This in turn will reduce the dependency on petrol and of course the network controlling the petrol .