Fuel Cells

[gevo27]

Not bad.... Glass fuel cells.

[Sip]

Wow that's VERY cool!!!

[Sasun]

I don't understand how hydrogen will come out of the glass spheres without breaking them.

[Sip]

The article says they have found a promising method that utilizes light to start a reaction with the glass that will let the hydrogen out. It seems to be still preliminary research but it sounds like they see hope.

 

By treating the spheres with various chemicals, the researchers use light to release the hydrogen in a second or two. They can also adjust the light's intensity to control the rate of flow.

 

"So starting the car would turn on the light at a level to begin production of electricity by a hydrogen fuel cell," says Shelby. "Acceleration would be done by just increasing the intensity of the light to provide more hydrogen to the fuel cell."

 

Perfecting that technique is where much of the research will focus and Shelby acknowledges that it will be "tricky."

[Sasun]

Oops, I missed the word "chemicals".

[DominO123]

The article says they have found a promising method that utilizes light to start a reaction with the glass that will let the hydrogen out. It seems to be still preliminary research but it sounds like they see hope.

It's a brilliant technic. They could not use heat because of the dilatation, so the other energy used would be light.

 

Another thing Sasun, don't forget(from what I understood from the article) there is two connections to fill it with hydrogen, one that will pump it in, so that the vaccum created does not end up stoping the filling of hydrogen.

 

I am skeptical that this thing will go far enough to see any results. Vava do you remember HydroQuebec car project and where it ended up? Everytime I heard of such a project they never gave real results.

[Sasun]

I don't know about filling, but it seems to me it would be technically much less challenging to crush the spheres at a proper rate to release the hydrogen. With such small spheres crushing would not cause any explosions. But then who knows, it might. Or maybe they want to recycle the spheres? Still I don't understand why go to such a sophisitcated method for getthing the hydrogen out of the spheres, there should be easier ways.

[Sip]

Do you guys realize that if they don't crush the glass, we'd end up having multiple vacuum glass bubbles?

[Sasun]

That should make Domino happy

[DominO123]

I don't know about filling, but it seems to me it would be technically much less challenging to crush the spheres at a proper rate to release the hydrogen. With such small spheres crushing would not cause any explosions. But then who knows, it might. Or maybe they want to recycle the spheres? Still I don't understand why go to such a sophisitcated method for getthing the hydrogen out of the spheres, there should be easier ways.

Such methods are needed, Hydrogen is very unstable, and it must be canned in pressure... in order to reduce the danger, the container should be very very heavy, reducing the efiiciancy of the car, as well as the braking system. And even than, there will still be a danger. An accident, and the car might blow instantaniously.

[gevo27]

Do you guys realize that if they don't crush the glass, we'd end up having multiple vacuum glass bubbles?

The glass is never punctured, this problem will not exist. The light will control the rate at which the hydrogen is released, the light will allow the dydrogen to pass through the glass because glass is in every form always liquid, it is just very vicous the way we see it.. so in essence the hydrogen would not be passing through solid at all.. it will be released due to the intense light cuasing the glass to weaken temporarily or something.. that was not to clear to me either... This is a good idea, but this will take no less than a century to catch on, because mainly of price, and the oil businesses...

Sasun, they cannot crush the glass, that would call for a filtering method to filter out the debris from the hydrogen.. etc.. and in that way it wouldnt be recyclable..

[DominO123]

The glass is never punctured, this problem will not exist. The light will control the rate at which the hydrogen is released, the light will allow the dydrogen to pass through the glass because glass is in every form always liquid, it is just very vicous the way we see it.. so in essence the hydrogen would not be passing through solid at all.. it will be released due to the intense light cuasing the glass to weaken temporarily or something.. that was not to clear to me either... This is a good idea, but this will take no less than a century to catch on, because mainly of price, and the oil businesses...

Sasun, they cannot crush the glass, that would call for a filtering method to filter out the debris from the hydrogen.. etc.. and in that way it wouldnt be recyclable..

Not so true... I won't correct you this time, as you'll accuse me to do that only to contradict you.

 

 

Well well, here an interesting reading.

 

 

By JACQUELINE DEELSTRA

Staff Writer

 

President Bush's claim that the mass production of vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells by 2020 will be cost-effective and practical is unrealistic, according to a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences.

 

In his State of the Union address in 2003, President Bush announced a $1.2 billion hydrogen fuel initiative aimed at allowing the United States to move toward powering cars, trucks, homes and businesses without depending on foreign oil or producing harmful greenhouse gases.

 

On Monday, the Energy Department announced that it would include $318 million in its 2005 budget for fuel cell and hydrogen production.

 

Spencer Abraham, the secretary of energy, said that it is the department's belief that hydrogen is the next frontier and economies based on hydrogen, rather than oil, are where the world is headed.

 

Surya G. K. Prakash, a professor of chemistry and co-director at USC's Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, is one scientist who disagrees.

 

Prakash, who researches fuel cells, said that a key thing to remember is that while hydrogen outwardly looks like a very attractive option for clean energy, it is very difficult and expensive to produce. With very little pure hydrogen occurring naturally in the environment, energy officials would have to think about a source for all the hydrogen that the country would use to power vehicles, Prakash said.

 

"You can't just make a hole in the ground where hydrogen will start pouring out," he said. "Hydrogen has to be made."

 

He also questioned the hype over hydrogen.

 

While hydrogen is a clean energy source that produces water when burned with oxygen rather than carbon dioxide — allowing us to move away from depleting our fossil fuel supplies — it is expensive and difficult to make.

 

One way to produce hydrogen is by electrically separating water, but 80 percent to 90 percent of our electricity is currently supplied by fossil fuels, creating the paradox of having to burn fossil fuels in order to get our alternative fuel.

 

Hydrogen is a gas above negative 250 degrees Celsius, very light and permeable through most material.

 

This in turn makes storing it and building a hydrogen infrastructure a very expensive proposition, Prakash said.

 

It would need to be stored in very heavy and expensive material to ensure that it does not escape. It is also extremely explosive, so it must be kept at certain pressures, making it dangerous to store.

 

Prakash said that while it is feasible to have gas pipelines that can easily transport oil from city to city, a similar infrastructure built for hydrogen would cost trillions of dollars.

 

A lot of support for the use of hydrogen and belief in the feasibility of hydrogen fuel cells for commercial use come from the knowledge that space shuttle engines currently use hydrogen as fuel. Prakash said that while it makes sense to use this type of energy for space shuttles it is just not feasible to produce the hydrogen infrastructure needed for commercial use.

 

The Loker Institute began work on hydrogen fuel cells in 1989 with a grant from the federal government. Shortly after their research began, Prakash said that they began to believe that there are better alternative-energy options.

 

George A. Olah, Nobel Prize winner for chemistry in 1994 and director of the Loker Institute, said in an editorial to Chemical and Engineering News that it is reasonable to start considering methanol as an alternative to the expensive and dangerous hydrogen option.

 

Methanol is a cheap, bulk commercial chemical that is much easier to produce than hydrogen, because it can come from wood and by recycling the carbon dioxide from our atmosphere into the alcohol. As a liquid, it does not come with the storage concerns that hydrogen has.

 

The Loker Institute, in conjunction with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology, also discovered a "direct methanol fuel cell." The DMFC technology is seen to have great promise and is currently being commercialized for use in devices such as cellular phones and laptops.

 

Olah said that it is realistic to say that methanol could eventually replace oil and gas as a fuel and as a chemical raw material to make products such as plastics. For this reason, he said, it is rewarding to start focusing energy and resources on developing a "methanol economy" rather than the "hydrogen economy."

 

In addition to developing alternative-energy sources the Loker Institute also looks at how to get more efficiency out of hydrocarbons such as oil, natural gas and coal. Prakash said such studies are important considering combustion engines, such as one used in cars and trucks, utilize only 17 percent of oil's energy potential. The rest is burned in the process of turning the fuel into thermal energy, which is then converted into electric energy to power the engine.

 

Fuel cells of any energy source — whether hydrogen, natural gas or methanol — are more efficient because they turn fuel directly into electric energy, Prakash said. Fuel cells at room temperature are 90 percent efficient.

 

Creating fuel cells and other devices that more efficiently use fossil fuels or use an alternative fuel is crucial because of the inevitable depletion of fossil fuel stocks and our current dependence on them.

 

 

Copyright 2004 by the Daily Trojan., Vol. 151, No. 22 (Friday, February 13, 2004), pp. 1-7

[gevo27]

The only part that may not be true is that part where i clearly stated "I BELEIVE" etc... glass is not a solid, therefor can be manipulated by intense light.. the details and pictography of this actually happeneing are in my materials eng textbook.. trust me Edited July 11, 2004 by gevo27