Hydrogen pill raises fuel hopes

[icymist]

Hydrogen pill raises fuel hopes

Danish researchers present an invention to solve one of the biggest hindrances in the way of hydrogen fuel replacing traditional oil and petrol

Claus Hviid Christensen's pill looks like a regular aspirin, but the headache it is designed to relieve is one of global dimensions.

Christensen, along with his team of scientists at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), have found a way to store hydrogen in a tablet form, overcoming one of the biggest problems with using hydrogen: storage.

'The last 20 years, researchers worldwide have tried to find a practical way to store hydrogen. Without it, there is no hope for hydrogen to become a dominant fuel typ. We have found that way,' Christensen, who is professor of chemistry at DTU, told daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

After keeping their project a secret for the past six months while waiting for international patent protection, the researchers planned to publicly reveal their invention at a scientific conference in Chicago on Wednesday.

(more)
http://www.cphpost.dk/get/90505.html

[tomreedtoon]

1. Another blue-sky scheme...

Things like this used to be published in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics all the time. They don't even get fifteen minutes of fame - more like two - before they disappear forever.

And it isn't the fault of some conspiracy theory, either. It's the fact that these PR announcements are premature and the specified inventions don't work.

[lectrobyte]

4. I keep hearing how we'll just use hydrogen power. They usually

leave out the part about how much input energy it would take to create the hydrogen...

[opihimoimoi]

2. I just hope this is not some rinky dink scam because if true....

we are gonna make some oil guys die.....

But then, if the Oil Guys Get a Hold of the Pill..... they become the H Guys...1 tablet for 60 Dollars...taKES YOU 200 MILES....SAME THING...shit.

I hope the tablets are true and we can get 200 miles for $20 like in the good ole days...

[BlueJac]

3. I hope this is true.....

What would Bush and Co do then, outlaw it?

[JohnyCanuck]

5. And how much energy does it take to make the hydrogen and the pill

compared to the energy released by the hydrogen pill?

If it takes more energy to produce than it releases when utilized, it will still make an impractical substitute for gasoline and diesel.

The Hydrogen Hallucination
Mark Sardella, PE

It’s being called the 'freedom fuel', capable of releasing us at last from the grip of the oil barons. The 'hydrogen economy' is even the buzz of the bestseller list. But don't break out the party balloons yet, because hydrogen hasn't even the slightest chance of solving our energy problems. A bold assertion, perhaps, but the proof is contained in the simplest of facts: Hydrogen is not a source of energy.

It is true that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but here on Earth all of the hydrogen is combined with other elements. The best example has two hydrogen atoms bonded to an oxygen atom, forming the familiar H2O water molecule. Four hydrogen atoms bonded to a carbon atom makes methane, which we know as 'natural gas'. But if what you need is pure hydrogen - the stuff fuel cells run on - you have to manufacture it. Doing so requires tearing hydrogen loose from whatever it's bonded to, which requires an input of energy. The energy you invest in breaking the bonds is essentially "stored" in the hydrogen, and you can get it back by allowing the hydrogen to bond to something again, as a fuel-cell does. So hydrogen is simply a storage medium - you have to put energy in before you get any back. It could thus be considered a carrier of energy, by it is by no means a source of energy.

This notion of hydrogen as a storage device is vastly different from petroleum, which is clearly a source of energy. As with hydrogen, petroleum requires an energy investment before it is a usable fuel. You have to drill for it, then pump, transport, refine, and transport it again before it can be used as an automobile fuel. But in the case of petroleum, the fuel you end up with contains about five times the energy needed to produce it. That's why it’s called a source of energy - the energy returned is greater than the energy invested.

<snip>

Some enthusiasts acknowledge that hydrogen is not a source, but that coupled with renewable sources, it's the perfect fuel. Unfortunately, that's just not the case. Hydrogen's low energy density makes it exceedingly inefficient to transport. To illustrate this, consider that a 40-ton tanker truck loaded with gasoline contains nearly 20 times the energy of a 40-ton truck loaded with compressed hydrogen. If both trucks deliver fuel to a filling station 800 miles away, the gasoline truck consumes about three percent of the energy in its payload to make the roundtrip. But the hydrogen truck traveling the same route would consume all of the energy in its payload. Put another way, if you tried to run the hydrogen delivery truck on hydrogen, it would consume its entire payload making the trip, and have no fuel to deliver.(1)

http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=384

[YapiYapo]

6. Last part maybe not so accurate anymore.

"Hydrogen's low energy density makes it exceedingly inefficient to transport. To illustrate this, consider that a 40-ton tanker truck loaded with gasoline contains nearly 20 times the energy of a 40-ton truck loaded with compressed hydrogen"

Those pills could change that.Energy used to produce them could come from nuclear.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. *If* their claims are correct

then they have substantially solved the problem alluded to in your last quoted paragraph - 500km using 50 litres is equivalent to 23mpg, so they have got to the same order of magnitude as oil-powered cars.

[Qibing Zero]

10. Yes, but just as gas was not always as energy efficient...

..technology will provide for hydrogen to increase the same way. If we actually looked into it, we could be studying more efficient ways to extract hydrogen to and from certain compounds. In time, the costs will settle to a level of at least that of our current oil, and since we're talking about a much more common energy source, we win in the end. Plus it's clean - that's a BIG deal.

The argument about hydrogen requiring so much energy to produce is a non-issue. Every fuel source requires energy to produce - and the question is not exactly the ratio of the input to output. Wind powered hydrogen 'farms' can be placed in places where it would normally be inconvienant to have straight wind power (say, all over the ocean). The wind is renewable, and you're already at the source of the hydrogen (the water), so all you need is a method of turning water into hydrogen as efficiently as possible. This solves the 'energy source' problem because of the always-existant wind power. You're basically harnassing the power of the wind to create electricity to power your machinery that would create hydrogen, which is much more practical to use (fuel-cells) than anything else you'd be getting from having a wind farm on the ocean.

There's a lot of neat research being done in regards to specific compounds that include hydrogen in different densities - that's how you fight the storage problem, and I'm sure that's what these folks have been working on.

[ThomWV]

8. No One Could Be Stupid Enought To Believe ....

And where, pray tell, is the hydrogen going to come from? Well, let me give you a hint. All of the hydrogen economy schemes being persued by our Government, and any other for that matter, get their gas by processing coal, some of the filthiest shit on earth.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Or natural gas

which is the main current source of hydrogen. And plenty of people advocate using nuclear, or renewables, to produce it.