Hydrogen fuel breakthrough in Queensland could fire up massive new export market

a reply to: pteridine

This great idea will fade quickly.

yes ats has this effect on ideas

this is the place where technology comes to die

Burning ammonia;

Taking measures against climate change and converting into societies that use significant amounts of renewable energy for power are two of the most important issues common to developed countries today. One promising technology in those efforts uses hydrogen (H2) as a renewable energy source. Although it is a primary candidate for clean secondary energy, large amounts of H2 must be converted into liquid form, which is a difficult process, for easier storage and transportation. Among the possible forms of liquid H2, ammonia (NH3) is a promising carrier because it has high H2 density, is easily liquefied, and can be produced on a large-scale.

Additionally, NH3 has been drawing attention recently as a carbon-free alternative fuel. NH3 is a combustible gas that can be widely used in thermal power generation and industrial furnaces as an alternative to gasoline and light oil. However, it is difficult to burn (high ignition temperature) and generates harmful nitrogen oxides (NOx) during combustion.

Researchers at the International Research Organization for Advanced Science and Technology (IROAST) in Kumamoto University, Japan focused on a "catalytic combustion method" to solve the NH3 fuel problems. This method adds substances that promote or suppress chemical reactions during fuel combustion. Recently, they succeeded in developing a new catalyst which improves NH3 combustibility and suppresses the generation of NOx. The novel catalyst (CuOx/3A2S) is a mullite-type crystal structure 3Al2O3·2SiO2 (3A2S) carrying copper oxide (CuOx). When NH3 was burned with this catalyst, researchers found that it stayed highly active in the selective production of N2, meaning that it suppressed NOx formation, and the catalyst itself did not change even at high temperatures. Additionally, they succeeded with in situ (Operando) observations during the CuOx/3A2S reaction, and clarified the NH3 catalytic combustion reaction mechanism.

Since 3A2S is a commercially available material and CuOx can be produced by a method widely used in industry (wet impregnation method), this new catalyst can be manufactured easily and at low cost. Its use allows for the decomposition of NH3 into H2 with the heat from (low ignition temperature) NH3 fuel combustion, and the purification of NH3 through oxidation.

"Our catalyst appears to be a step in the right direction to fight anthropogenic climate change since it does not emit greenhouse gasses like CO2 and should improve the sophistication of renewable energy within our society," said study leader Dr. Satoshi Hinokuma of IROAST. "We are planning to conduct further research and development under more practical conditions in the future."

New catalyst turns ammonia into an innovative clean fuel

But honstly, working in an industry that uses ammonia, I still have reservations.

Can't wait for those urine collectors combined with an hho generator bolted onto an reverse osmosis filter hit the ebay market.

(same source)

Next to Monash University, Sarb Giddey and his colleagues at the Clayton offices of CSIRO Energy are making ammonia with their "membrane reactor." It relies on high temperatures and modest pressures—far less than those in a Haber-Bosch reactor—that, compared to MacFarlane's cell, boost throughput while sacrificing efficiency. The reactor designs call for a pair of concentric long metallic tubes, heated to 450°C. Into the narrow gap between the tubes flows H2, which could be made by a solar- or wind-powered electrolyzer. Catalysts lining the gap split the H2 molecules into individual hydrogen atoms, which modest pressures then force through the atomic lattice of the inner tube wall to its hollow core, where piped-in N2 molecules await. A catalytically active metal such as palladium lines the inner surface, splitting the N2 and coaxing the hydrogen and nitrogen to combine into ammonia—much faster than in MacFarlane's cell. So far only a small fraction of the input H2 reacts in any given pass—another knock to the reactor's efficiency.

sciencemag.org - Ammonia—a renewable fuel made from sun, air, and water—could power the globe without carbon.

Again, this is *not* a hydrogen fuel breakthrough but a membrane technology breakthrough.

In the Science article, you can see "palladium" there. In OP, they have removed the reliance on that element. That is where the breakthrough is located. The rest is not "hydrogen economy" but "ammonia economy" where renewable electricity is stored as chemical energy. That is where they can go in different directions. Burn ammonia directly (probably needs some work), reconvert it back to H2 for fuel cell vehicles (what OP article was all about), or even create fertilizer.

South Australia is set to open a pilot plant to create ammonia 2020 (same source).

Efficient conversion is given up for carbonless emissions at production and use. Oh well. We've been puking CO2 into the atmosphere for hundreds of years so every little bit helps!

Scientists from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have used their own type of graphene called "GraphAir" to develop a water filter membrane that is reportedly capable of making water from Sydney Harbor drinkable.

graphene-info.com (blog) - Australian CSIRO develops promising graphene-based water filtration membrane.

Let's daisy chain these ideas together! I bet CSIRO has thought of it in passing.

Filter mildly polluted water to clean water. User solar-wind to hydrolyze the filtered water to H2 and O2. Convert the H2 to ammonia for transport. Move it around to fueling stations. At a vehicle's fuel cell, the 99.9999% pure H2 is used to create electricity reversing the process and yielding pure H20 as the exhaust. Your vehicle moves stuff around while you help purify water!

Make every vehicle in California hydrogen fuel cells and gather all the exhaust! Water shortage? Probably not solved but with the number vehicles probably not worsened. Air pollution from vehicles trending towards zero. People and goods still being moved around.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Scientists from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have used their own type of graphene called "GraphAir" to develop a water filter membrane that is reportedly capable of making water from Sydney Harbor drinkable.

graphene-info.com (blog) - Australian CSIRO develops promising graphene-based water filtration membrane.

Let's daisy chain these ideas together! I bet CSIRO has thought of it in passing.

Filter mildly polluted water to clean water. User solar-wind to hydrolyze the filtered water to H2 and O2. Convert the H2 to ammonia for transport. Move it around to fueling stations. At a vehicle's fuel cell, the 99.9999% pure H2 is used to create electricity reversing the process and yielding pure H20 as the exhaust. Your vehicle moves stuff around while you help purify water!

Make every vehicle in California hydrogen fuel cells and gather all the exhaust! Water shortage? Probably not solved but with the number vehicles probably not worsened. Air pollution from vehicles trending towards zero. People and goods still being moved around.

Interestingly, hydrogen fuel cells don't use all of the hydrogen each pass. There is about 10% left in the exhaust so what has to happen, unless 10% of that very expensive hydrogen is wasted, is that the water in the exhaust must be condensed [maybe air cooling would work] and the hydrogen recycled. This would require an onboard compressor and additional piping. The other small problem is that the membrane cells have about a 1000 hour lifetime and solid oxide cells are not suitable for transportation vehicles.
Here is an obvious solution. If one has a supply of inexpensive hydrogen, take CO2 from the atmosphere and reduce it with the hydrogen. There are existing processes that will allow easy conversion to methanol or even gasoline and diesel; liquids at ambient temperature with a large infrastructure and knowledge base on safety and handling. Now, the several trillion needed for converting traditional fueling stations to hydrogen and the long and expensive transition will be unnecessary. Existing IC technologies and hybrid vehicles will work just fine and the fuel burned will just replenish the atmospheric CO2. Over time, natural processes will reduce CO2 in the atmosphere as the CO2 carbon acts as a carrier for the low cost hydrogen.

ETA: metallic membranes have been used for decades to separate hydrogen. Ammonia is not a good choice for a fuel [think about a wreck with liquid ammonia leaking and poisoning people unless there is a spark to light it up.]

Yes! Another fine day in Australia

originally posted by: EartOccupant
a reply to: punkinworks10

I think "old" oil would like to keep there infrastructure and cash flow of the old gas stations.

This fits there system perfectly.

I think this gets bought out or the man dies in a accident. who wants to place bets?

a reply to: yuppa


They (Big Oil) are going to have a yuge body count!

Toyota improves fuel cell truck.

Maybe that is why CSIRO made the announcement instead of an individual! Add on BMW, Hyundai, and Toyota, and all 16,000 vehicles on the road in Asian countries. They are doing demo and trials around SoCal now subbing out diesel trucks for fuel cell trucks. Not that I think BO is not up to... snuff! (ugh, bad pun) but taking all this investment already spent I think they have a toe hold in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Then, if Lockheed ever announces their CFR, or anybody else for that matter, then we will have to transition over as everything will run on electricity. And if you have a convenient method of storing energy like ammonia/hydrogen then all the better!

Like anything it will take time and investment from government to get a hydrogen filling station in Hoboken and Queens but I am sure some big oil guy will "donate for a better future" some funding as they try to stay relevant in a changing economic setting. But that is big picture, ideals, and dreams of a real hydrogen economy with fusion!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF


I can guarantee you that no one "MAKES" Hydrogen atoms. Those Aussies may have figured out a better way to stabilize it for transporting overseas, but they cannot make elemental Hydrogen.

a reply to: carpooler


Thanks! I just re-read the OP and nowhere do I say they are "making" hydrogen. The title comes from the MSM report the OP is based on. I don't get to change the title which is why I said this is a "membrane breakthrough" (in bold!) to convert hydrogen to ammonia.



Wondering and pondering hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and who is doing what out there. I ran across a company that has been doing this a while all on their own. They are patenting their technology and working towards a long term goal of being green all the way. The Haber-Bosch process is what they are attacking.

In the process of splitting a water molecule, input energy is transferred into the chemical bonds of the resulting hydrogen molecule. So in essence, manufactured hydrogen is simply a carrier or battery-like storage of the input energy. If the input energy is from fossil fuels, such as oil and gas, then dirty carbon fossil fuel energy is simply transferred into hydrogen. If the input energy is renewable such as solar and wind, then new and clean energy is stored in hydrogen.

That makes sense in a gross generalization kind of way. I am sensing a "but wait... there's more" moment coming...

Our low cost nano-size particle technology is designed to mimic photosynthesis and contains a solar absorber that generates electrons from sunlight, as well as integrated cathode and anode areas to readily split water and transfer those electrons to the molecular bonds of hydrogen. Unlike solar panels or wind turbines that produce a sizeable number of electrons that will be lost before reaching the hydrogen bonds, our nanoparticles are optimized at the nano-level to ensure maximal electron generation and utilization efficiency. Consequently, our nanoparticle technology uses substantially fewer photovoltaic elements, an expensive material, than conventional solar panels to achieve the same system level efficiency.

Artificial photosynthesis! OK. That makes sense. In essence, shrink everything down in size to allow massive parallel processing of water. The other kicker is they have a lining protecting their nanoleaf hydrogen plant keeping corrosion from eating away at their nano-particles.

These guys (and gals) are out of Santa Barbara, CA, but have teamed up with... Australia! Their end goal is taking their scalable technology to harness renewable electricity in the form of hydrogen for creating electricity or use in FCV. The water can be any source as well (another good thing) so it does not have to be pure Swiss water (I once got sick on imported Swiss water! lol).

HyperSolar.com - Technology.
HyperSolar.com, news, June 5, 2018 - HyperSolar Announces a Record 294 Hours of Successful Hydrogen Production.

The patent protects the Company’s proprietary design of a self-contained high voltage solar-to-hydrogen device made up of billions of solar-powered water-splitting nanoparticles, per square centimeter. These nanoparticles consist of multiple layers of solar cells stacked on top of each other to increase the photovoltages for higher solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency.
...

Commented HyperSolar’s CEO Tim Young, “With abundant land and sun, Australia offers huge opportunity for our renewable hydrogen. Both Toyota and Hyundai have committed to bringing hydrogen fuel-cell cars to Australia. The patent is critical to protecting the intellectual property related to the development our GEN 2 technology. It complements our other granted and pending patents and puts us a step closer to realizing our goal of renewable, low-cost hydrogen produced near or at the point of use, such as at hydrogen stations or in Amazon fulfillment centers where hydrogen fuel-cell powered forklifts are widely used.”

Globenewswire.com, Aug. 6, 2018 - HyperSolar Gains Additional Protection for Its Renewable Hydrogen Production Nanotechnology in Australia.

Looks like Australia is trying to go for a revolution!

As part of this project, Air Liquide developed, built, and is operating the facility that produces hydrogen from water electrolysis as well as the filling center for its customers delivered by trailers. The electrolyser, with a capacity of 1.2 MW, enables the production of around 500 kg of hydrogen a day without releasing CO2. Besides industrial customers, the hydrogen that is produced is used to supply the network of five hydrogen stations installed and operated by the Copenhagen Hydrogen Network (CHN), a subsidiary of Air Liquide in Denmark.

businesswire.com, Sept. 3, 2018 - Air Liquide Inaugurates a Pilot Site for the Production of Carbon-free Hydrogen in Denmark.

Under the equipment supply agreement, Air Products will provide two state-of-the-art, integrated Smartfuel® technology fueling stations to Fullcryo for constructing the first-of-its-kind station located in Guangdong Province, South China.

In compliance with the SAE's (Society of Automotive Engineers) J2601 fueling protocol, the station will consist of key components, including a liquid hydrogen storage tank, high-efficiency booster pump, high-pressure gasifier and gaseous storage tank, dispenser, and control system. Its fueling capacity is designed to reach 500 kilograms per day of hydrogen and can be expanded to 1,500 kilograms per day for both 35Mpa and 70Mpa fueling.

PRNewswire.com, Sept. 4, 2018 - Air Products to Support First Commercial-scale Liquid Hydrogen-based Fueling Station in China.

First Germany, Australia, Japan, and South Korea were building up their hydrogen stations. Now Denmark and China. So where is the USA?

Last month, there was a hydrogen shortage in LA. Toyota announced a plant last year (2017) but I haven't seen any news about that. There is one coming online on the East Coast but it is targeted for manufacturing not end consumers.

Here is a slightly dated (July) article about California and hydrogen.

digitaltrends.com - The coming hydrogen fuel cell evolution.

One cool idea that is mentioned in the article is using hydrogen fuel cells as backup generators. You do not have to have diesel sitting around turning to jelly!

a reply to: BASSPLYR
Yeah Gov aint gonna let that happen here..Bring on another Summer of Power outages..

Rather than a diesel tank powering an engine, the iLint trains are more like a Toyota Mirai in their construction. A hydrogen tank feeds a fuel cell that generates energy, which is then pushed to an electric drivetrain. A very small battery helps maintain power continuity, as well as storing energy saved from regenerative braking.

The fuel cell itself sits close to the middle of the train, where one unit joins onto the other, and should be almost totally silent. In the prototype we rode, the cell's housing wasn't insulated, and you could hear the slightly unsettling noises that the system made. Train nerds and horror fans might want to sit close to the middle and try and listen for the weird screeching noise, because it's the only sound the vehicles make.

Engadget.com, Sept. 18, 2018 - The world's first hydrogen train is now in service.

Add this news: Air Products to build liquid hydrogen plant in Houston area.

bizjournals.com??? The "old bait and switch" because the url said Houston news... anyway. It is not going to be just any place "in the Houston area" but at La Porte where if you have been following along on that thread is where the supercritical CO2 turbine demo plant is located. It makes sense, they are already separating out O2 for the SCO2 demo plant so an H2 plant makes sense. The plant will come online in 2021.

The train has already been tested. They are ready to mass produce them pending the real world tests.

More steps towards the carbonless world.

The robust metal–organic framework MFM-300(Al) has been shown to be a potent filter for nitrogen dioxide, which is a harmful pollutant in air. Martin Schröder and his colleagues at the University of Manchester, UK, have now scrutinized MFM-300(Al) for its ability to take up ammonia. They discovered that it could take up gaseous ammonia up to a density that comes close to that of liquid ammonia under ambient conditions. At around zero degrees Celsius it even surpassed this density.

MFM-300(Al) consists of aluminum hydroxide moieties and biphenyl tetracarboxylic acid organic ligands that bridge the aluminum sites to form a rigid "wine-rack" framework, as the authors called it. Instead of wine bottles, gas molecules lie in the nanochannels and pores.

phys.org, Oct. 8, 2018 - A robust material for the uptake and storage of ammonia at densities that come close to that of the liquefied gas.

OP was about a membrane breakthrough where ammonia is used as an energy carrier for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Amonnia, at industrial production levels, is produced by turn of the 20th century, Haber Process, which basically steams apart liquid natural gas and releases a bunch of CO2 in the process. The race is on to create a better process of ammonia production, and if at all possible, tie it to a carbon free energy source.

The above is the answer to the question, "Now that we got the stuff, what do we do with it?"

The metal organic framework (MOF) is an interesting field of research! Combining nanoparticle metals with organic structures allow them to design lattices with interesting properties. The device that creates water out of air and solar power uses an MOF. They were looking at N2 scrubbing when the ammonia idea popped up! The article goes on to state they added deuterium tags in the ammonia to see which process was involved with uptake ("sorbtion" in the article). It was not purely physical or electrostatic so they are not sure what is happening.

The fact their deuterium was exchanged with a hydrogen molecule is intriguing! Maybe this can be triple dutied over to a tritium/deuterium water filter!?? Filter sea water out for fusion reactor fuel, create ammonia from nuclear fusion, transport it around in MOF containers, at fueling stations use the membrane to convert back over to hydrogen, pump you vehicle full, and off you go to your hydrogen economy job run by our AI overlords!!

Science!

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
So ATS, thoughts?

I've seen a few Honda and BMW hydrogen fuel cell cars running around, but there are only three fueling stations anywhere near me. So it's more of an infrastructure issue than anything.

However, it seems to me that it would be relatively easy for everyone to make their own hydrogen in their garages with some solar panels running electricity through water. Then it's just a matter of tanking it up. Never going to the gas station again.

Yeah, well, Popular Mechanics probably ran an article about hydrogen fueled flying cars in 1938.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Given hydrogen’s atomic weight of 1.008, today – Oct. 8 (10-08) – is designated National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day. It is also Columbus Day – a fitting coincidence because, like Columbus, our researchers explore the unknown.

Tri-cityHerald.com

I did not even know there was such a day!

I, like everyone else of this (and maybe a couple more) generation wants our jet packs and floating cars! "Hydrogen economy" seems possible with news like OP made, or the MOF news of today. If I could choose then heck yeah I want a fuel cell vehicle! In a pinch, you could also just use it as a battery or a generator. Can't do that with your car!

Maybe, one day, I will do that with an internal combustion engine with the garage door down and shuffle off this mortal coil! Especially if we keep up our doom porn love affair with fossil fuels!

It takes 5 gallons of hydrogen to produce the same amount of energy as 1 gallon of gasoline. Either hydrogen cars will have an enormous fuel tank or they will need to be refueled much more frequently. Not very practical, IMO.

originally posted by: eManym
It takes 5 gallons of hydrogen to produce the same amount of energy as 1 gallon of gasoline. Either hydrogen cars will have an enormous fuel tank or they will need to be refueled much more frequently. Not very practical, IMO.

That is not entirely correct.
If you are strictly comparing burning gaseous H2 to burning gasoline then yes, it takes 5 times volume of H2 to equal energy output of gasoline.
But, for the most part we are talking about H2 fuel cells,

In fact, a fuel cell coupled with an electric motor is two to three times more efficient than an internal combustion engine running on gasoline.

www.afdc.energy.gov...
So, gjven that metric and the fact that H2 is not going to be stored as a gas, it's too hard to keep in container in it's gaseous state for general consumer goods, and chilling and keeping it cold enough to he be a liquid is also impractical, solid state storage or cracking it from a carrier material, such as hydrocarbons or ammonia, it becomes more than viable.
There are several solid state storage solutions that have been somewhat worked on, one of the most promising and efficient is storing it as a metal hydride.
In the mid 2000's BWM built all of its sedans to be convertable to H2. The engines will run on gaseous H2, with minor changes to ECU programming, and the chassis had the hardpoints for the hydride "tank" already engineered in to the vehicle.
There is also newer work for storing H in a graphene lattice matrix, and the storage densities are astounding, you would be able to fit far far more energy into the an equivalent volume than with gasoline.

a reply to: Blue Shift


Found something out today.

First, I was reading this at the National Law Review: DOE Announces Collaborative Project On Hydrogen And Fuel Cells.

Where the DOE has signed MOU with the Army to investigate hydrogen fuel cells, production, and infrastructure.

Well, they also mention the DOE's H2@ Scale

H2@ Scale is a concept that explores the potential for wide-scale hydrogen production and utilization in the United States to enable resiliency of the power generation and transmission sectors, while also aligning diverse multibillion dollar domestic industries, domestic competitiveness, and job creation.

energy.gov - H2@ Scale.

The concept has been up and running for 2 years! They have a info graphic showing what the full infrastructure would like based upon hydrogen within current settings. The entire side of the "Hydrogen Economy"!

It is an "addition to" view instead of complete replacement of another energy segment (coal, gas, or oil). But it also a closed loop.

Somebody has been doing some "forward thinking" for once!