Hydrogen Tech Breakthrough: Chemist at USC develop a way to safely extract and store hydrogen

www.sciencedaily.com...

I am grateful for this, I have long wondered why hydrogen wasn't looked into as it has the greatest ability to create energy out of all the light gasses we can safely use. Good work Graduates

ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2011) — A team of USC scientists has developed a robust, efficient method of using hydrogen as a fuel source.

Hydrogen makes a great fuel because of it can easily be converted to electricity in a fuel cell and because it is carbon free. The downside of hydrogen is that, because it is a gas, it can only be stored in high pressure or cryogenic tanks.

HA! cryogenic storage... Who missed this in Real Genius... why didn't they try it before! I love it Val Kilmer you muse you!

Here is the creators page at USC Dornsife
dornsife.usc.edu...

Now Dornsife has a crown to go with it's only recent inauguration into the academic community this is a great story.
dornsife.usc.edu...
here is a link to the schools recent beginnings.

Lets hope this Tech gets huge attention and goes out to the world and not buried in some Company black list.

reply to post by LanternOfDiogenes


Producing hydrogen economically is a bigger hurdle than storing it. Storing hydrogen as an ammonia borane complex is not an economical way to go. It is far better to make gasoline from the hydrogen and atmospheric CO2.

Interesting.. a bit of digging revealed this article from 2008:

Ammonia borane (NH3BH3) has a high hydrogen content and is stable at room temperature, but has, in the past, proven difficult to prepare in high yield. Now, Tom Autrey and co-workers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, US, have developed a new one-pot synthetic method to this solid material.1

Autrey's method requires in situ production of ammonium borohydride (NH4BH4) by the addition of NH4X and MBH4 salts (X = Cl, F, M = Na, Li) in liquid ammonia, followed by removal of the majority of the ammonia, then addition of tetrahydrofuran (THF) which causes the NH4BH4 to decompose to ammonia borane in high yield

Chen proposes the use of sodium aminoborane (NaNH2BH3) as an alternative to ammonia borane as it does not release borazine on decomposition. Traditionally sodium aminoborane is made using a mechano-synthetic route which requires additives to aid milling. But these additives cause a reduction in the hydrogen density of the product.

Chen's wet-chemical method allows pure sodium aminoborane to be made. He proposes two routes, the faster of which involves adding sodium hydride (NaH) to a solution of ammonia borane (NH3BH3) in THF. The reaction occurs within 10 minutes at -3 °C, giving solid sodium aminoborane which can be filtered off.

www.rsc.org...

reply to post by rogerstigers


This "breakthrough" will be too expensive by far for any practical use. Universities regularly trumpet these studies as breakthrough technologies when they are just laboratory experiments.
Ask what happens when the hydrogen is released; what compound is formed? Can it be recycled at low cost? How will that be done? What is the cost of BH3? Of NH3? Are they more or less expensive than H2? Are they more or less expensive than methanol made from H2 and atmospheric CO2? What infrastructure changes will be needed to use this material and how will anyone afford to market it? This last is a show-stopper for many much better ideas than this. To generate demand for a fuel source, you must sell vehicles that use the source and fuel stations will be built to meet the need. To sell vehicles, you must have fuel stations. This chicken-egg problem killed off the natural gas vehicle concept and these are used only for short range fleet vehicles.
File this in the breakthrough bin. Don't worry, there will be another breakthrough tomorrow.

reply to post by pteridine


Indeed, such has been the case with a lot of things over the years. In fact, the only real reason we ended up with gasoline cars is because gasoline was originally a waste product of the oil refining process (and used to be dumped into the ground for disposal).

Still the research from the article in 2008 that I linked was interesting. Looks like it was still in the lab at that time, so I doubt any serious ROI calculations have been performed on it.

reply to post by rogerstigers


The cost of BH3 alone will make this too expensive. The ROI calculation only has to look at that. There are much less expensive alternatives that use existing infrastructure, such as gasoline and, with some modification, methanol.
The technology exists to make these from atmospheric CO2 and hydrogen. No logistical infrastructure changes are needed. Both will run in IC engines.

Borane-ammonia is a laboratory curiousity.

Thank you gentleman for the input... I always encourage intellectual discourse, While it may be too expensive now, any move in the direction of progress can be counted a win. At least in my meager opinion. I believe as you play with a process the more you find ways to reduce the cost, or find a new way process all together, but that only happens through finding what does not work As Edison said "If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward"

We need to find something that can take us off gasoline I do like the methanol idea as it was more input than put down fortunately I have never been discouraged easily. If as you say, methanol can be harvested easily without too much infrastructure, restructure, why have TPTB not moved that direction...same old answer make more money off of oil junkies?? The problem is a beast that has many heads, and as long as greed rules the playing field I do not see an easy answer in the near future, seems like war for oil is a better solution for some. I still believe this to be a scientific win and hope for more work from this group to be published in the future.

As for naysayers, pick up a paddle and start rowing rather than crossing your arms and saying "We're screwed"

reply to post by rogerstigers


I remeber reading about this, good to see the theory and chemical process is still being worked on and excellent progress in just 3yrs

reply to post by LanternOfDiogenes


The key to all of these technologies is sufficient quantities of low-cost hydrogen. The lowest cost hydrogen now comes from methane reforming. If a CO2 neutral source of H2 is desired, nuclear power or renewables can be used to provide it. This will require enormous infrastructure investment that will take many decades.

Borane-ammonia is a high-cost, roundabout way of storing and recovering H2 and will not be commercialized. Methanol or methanol derived gasoline is a once through way of storing hydrogen in a form that will allow easy handling, fit the existing fuel distribution system, and eliminate recycle except for using CO2 from the atmosphere. Borane-ammonia produces a waste product, borazine, that must be recycled, at cost, and has little known safety and handling considerations.

So DON'T store it, PRODUCE IT ON DEMAND.

Store inert water, extract hydrogen on demand.

reply to post by Bobbob


As in electrolysis, of course, however I believe the storing of that garnered gas and the power required to grant amounts large enough to use make it relatively unfeasible at the moment if I understand it properly. as Pteridine has pointed out it is cost that is ultimately ruling this exploration of new energies. It is unfortunately true.

reply to post by pteridine


Pteridine, you seem to know a great deal about this subject, I like the harvest fuel from our own atmosphere ingenious I wonder if this is being explored at all.

On a side note I just watched a Doc on LincVolt Neil Youngs multi fuel car, you probably have heard about it, what got me was not the fact that in every way it was a forward thinking car but that a week after revealing this vehicle to SEMA, with countless documented operation hours..... burned, the only thing in the warehouse that did burn.

Take it any way you want, Tucker, should be a lesson. Big Bushiness wont have it.

Because as you say it is all about cost and easy of process.

reply to post by Bobbob


Hydrogen and reduced products are energy storage media. Producing it "on demand" requires more energy than the product hydrogen can produce so it makes no sense to produce it on demand. Using nuclear power to make hydrogen at a fixed location will allow some form of stored hydrogen to be used where needed because it is tough to move a 1200MW power plant.

Originally posted by LanternOfDiogenes
reply to post by pteridine

 

Pteridine, you seem to know a great deal about this subject, I like the harvest fuel from our own atmosphere ingenious

I wonder if this is being explored at all.

The only thing that would be harvested from our atmosphere is CO2 which would be the hydrogen carrier, just to make it easier to handle. The technologies of producing methanol and gasoline from CO2 are well known so there are no new technologies required. There have been many studies done on costs of fuels from CO2. The costs are varied only because of the uncertainty of the costs for collecting CO2 from the atmosphere.

Originally posted by LanternOfDiogenes

As in electrolysis, of course, however I believe the storing of that garnered gas and the power required to grant amounts large enough to use make it relatively unfeasible at the moment if I understand it properly. as Pteridine has pointed out it is cost that is ultimately ruling this exploration of new energies. It is unfortunately true.

The only way alternative energy sources, clean or not so clean, can become viable is for energy prices to increase and everyone is noticing just that lately. Higher prices will make more hydro, solar, wind, wave, tidal, geothermal, whatever schemes economically viable. IE the things that previously couldn't possibly compete with nuclear and fossil fuel sources just a few years ago. The proposed carbon taxes will further move the goal posts toward the alternatives but it's going to hurt average people.

reply to post by Pilgrum


Yes, the common man/woman will suffer as we raise energy prices to drive technology. While there is no good time to do so, the present economic conditions make such increased costs particularly odious. The economics of coal use require that carbon taxes be imposed or that the CO2 be sequestered in deep geologic formations. Sequestration would roughly double the cost of electricity to the consumer and give more expensive technologies a chance. Most of those new technologies have larger and more visible footprints than coal or nuclear. The unintended consequences of wind turbines killing off raptors and bats must be weighed more heavily than whining about wind turbines ruining the view for residents of Martha's Vinyard. New forms of electrical generation will require adjustmants to infrastructure and more cradle to grave analyses to determine the real impacts and costs. One wind turbine or solar panel might be inconsequential but hundreds of thousands could change weather patterns.
A promising concept is the use of underwater turbines in ocean currents. The straits of Florida would provide a nice test bed and it is estimated that 30% of Florida's electricity could eventually be provided by using the Gulf stream. There is much development that must be done but such devices would be less susceptible to weather and climate than wind turbines and solar arrays.

reply to post by pteridine


The problem I can see with the proposal to manufacture liquid fuel from atmospheric CO2 is that it won't address the CO2 problem (if there actually is one that is) because it'll simply be getting partially recycled IE motor exhausts will still be releasing carbon compounds and abundant sources of fresh CO & CO2 will continue to operate.

Originally posted by Pilgrum
reply to post by pteridine

 

The problem I can see with the proposal to manufacture liquid fuel from atmospheric CO2 is that it won't address the CO2 problem (if there actually is one that is) because it'll simply be getting partially recycled IE motor exhausts will still be releasing carbon compounds and abundant sources of fresh CO & CO2 will continue to operate.

The CO2 is just a hydrogen carrier and recycles. The atmospheric CO2 is reduced by the amount of fuel in the pipeline but the overall effect is CO2 neutral. The conversion eliminates the problem of separate infrastructures for hydrogen and hydrocarbons and allows continued use of existing vehicles.
The result on atmospheric CO2 is the same as if batteries or hydrogen were the energy storage media.