222 comments on DrumBeat: August 4, 2008
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222 comments on DrumBeat: August 4, 2008
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This article promises a "breakthrough" in solar energy storage...just wondering what our experts here thought of it. Apologies if it's already been posted.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080731143345.htm
I think it was posted and discussed last Friday. My impression was that all they have done is swapped one of the platinum electrodes for a cheaper material. Otherwise its standard electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen and oxygen.
I somehow knew I wasn't going to beat the folks on this forum to something like this...thanks.
The reason we know that it's likely there is some real substance to this development is that it is featured in the journal, Science. This is one of the most prestigious scientific periodicals in the world.
They don't publish trivial improvements/advances in technology.
Science would probably want to see a significant scientific contribution, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the advance is of imminent importance to society at large or relevant to the kinds of issues TOD readers care about.
We'll see...
Here's an example of what this TOD reader cares about ;-)
Recently announced.....
ITM Power Showcases Hydrogen Home Refuelling Station
Hmmmmm..... I wonder if there is any relevance? :-)
Some additional links:
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1877/78/
http://www.redherring.com/blogs/24457
Relevant?
Sigh, not another stupid hydrogen demonstration.
Hydrogen through electrolysis -> hydrogen compressed storage -> electricity -> electric motor (+ICM for gasoline) -> conventional car.
What a stupid energy wasting idea, esp. when combined with a 'home hydrogen recharging station'.
Ulf Bossel has way too many times calculated hydrogen cycle as a total non-starter. There is a thermodynamic ceiling which cannot be bypassed and after which the hydrogen cycle is at best half as efficient as best of battery technology.
Chris Rhodes has some back of the envelope calculations for the electricity needed for such a hydrogen folly.
I don't understand why smart people keep on jammering about hydrogen powered vehicles for personal transport. It's brain dead considering there are so much better alternatives for short-distance road transport.
It would be believable if the advocates had some real numbers to show, why hydrogen makes sense, but they have none.
It's important to remember though that technologies ultimately compete on the basis of price. What if the materials that make up batteries become too expensive because of scarcity issues?
Also, "Thermodynamic ceiling" might not have overwhelming relevance outside of the lab. For instance, the world record for fuel efficiency is held by the hydrogen fueled Pac-Car II
Although utterly impractical, it gets 12,666 mpg
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/mostEfficient.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAC-Car_II
How close is this vehicle to the thermodynamic ceiling?
Indeed, they compete on price.
And how much do you think energy costs in a world of increasing energy scarcity risk?
How much does it cost, when you waste twice the amount compared to batteries?
Costs creep up pretty fast and carry through the whole lifetime of the system.
As for your example (which is indeed silly), the same could be achieved with batteries, except the unit would have roughly twice the mpg.
So, again: what is the point in hydrogen powered vehicles, when better alternatives exist today?
Here's another reason why I think hydrogen should continue to be pursued in addition to battery technology:
At the extreme limit, we know there are some applications for which batteries are not feasible. The space shuttle for instance whose main engines burn hydrogen and oxygen.
What about other heavy vehicles that need a lot of power? Transport trucks, earth moving machinery etc.
In addition, as mentioned above, good batteries are very expensive and don't last forever as they need to be replaced. Who knows how it will turn out in the long run?
Yes, for some other than short-term personal commuting, hydrogen powered vehicles may make sense.
On that we agree.
But hydrogen Ford Focus using a personal refuelling station? That's just way stupid (and my point all along).
"How close is this vehicle to the thermodynamic ceiling?"
Infinitely far away. The theoretical "ceiling" for a round trip is clearly zero (0) joules. This is old news: IIRC a fast vacuum subway operating with no air resistance figured in an early Arthur C. Clarke short story.
But this car-ette is operating in air, so theoretically it should usually yield energy, and in practice at least not consume it. This is also old news: thousands of years ago, the "sailboat" was invented. It can even go upwind, by "tacking".
So we see - as long as we stipulate that practicality is not a factor - that this example actually demonstrates failure. For some bizarre reason, the team did not include a sail of any kind. That's disappointing, because one might expect that the garishly colored symbolic seashell on the side should have triggered appropriately nautical thoughts...
SamuM says,
"There is a thermodynamic ceiling which cannot be bypassed and after which the hydrogen cycle is at best half as efficient as best of battery technology."
That may be true, and I have read Ulf Bossel's work and been persuaded that hydrogen is for the time being not competitive with plug hybrid, BUT, "half as efficient as best of battery technology" is still better than gasoline upon which a whole world industry has been built, and for a transportable (albeit not easily) fuel that is clean and can be produced locally and by renewables (the ONLY way it would make sense to produce it)hydrogen should not be completely dismissed.
Hydrogen for personal transportation almost certainly does not make sense now, but it is far better than a "stupid energy wasting idea" and research should not be dismissed or halted IF one accepts the validity of personal transport at all (we are leaving aside other applications for which hydrogen may be about the only option, as mentioned up string). At the end of the day, a battery can only be asked to do so much.
RC
I agree with everything Ulf Bossel says.
But there is no thermodynamic ceiling.
This is not the carnot cycle.
You can always find a better catalyst and improve your processes.
It is a big deal. The summary is crappy, but here's what's going on in English.
To break down water into hydrogen and oxygen at a reasonable rate you usually need to apply a voltage considerably in excess of the voltage that you would expect based on the strength of the bonds (there's no mystery to this, it's common for processes to be very slow when there's not a lot of excess energy around). In the past, people have tried to get around this by using very basic solutions and platinum electrodes. This helps but you still end up wasting a lot of energy (and generating a lot of heat) making the reaction proceed at a reasonable rate. What Nocera has done is come up with a clever catalyst that lets the reaction proceed quickly with a tiny (60 mV) overvoltage (that is the voltage over the 1.23V that you need according to thermodynamics to break up water). It also eliminates the need for the water to be at a very high pH which makes the process more convenient as well.
My really rough, back of the envelope calculations (and I'm not really an expert in electrochemistry) say that his process should be about 95% efficient. This is a big improvement over existing technology and really could make hydrogen energy storage a winner. This is especially true if he or someone else can come up with a similarly efficient fuel cell, which is a very related problem to electrolyzing water.
Very good summary, thanks.
it might be a big deal. but certainly not in efficiency: StatoilHydro's 4000 amp atmospheric electrolysers are rated at 4.1 kWh/Nm3 H2 which means a close to 90% efficiency. please do show us your back of envelope calculation for the 95% number.
a point worthy repeating: the whole problem of hydrogen energy storage is in the storage of hydrogen.
nh3 says,
"a point worthy repeating: the whole problem of hydrogen energy storage is in the storage of hydrogen."
Very true, but that is a tautological argument that does not only apply to hydrogen. The whole problem with energy in general is energy storage. Crack that nut and you’ve opened up a whole new world of energy options!
RC
It has been done before without any expensive materials, just with plain Stailess Steel at voltages between 1.5V and 2.0V :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kze_tI3Z5I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJLgv20LEF8
Around same 95% efficiency. So, it's old news.
Old news..
See the July 31 and August 1 DrumBeats.
There might be a key post on this, just because there's so much interest. Personally, I don't think it will amount to much.
The breakthrough is that they can substitute cheaper materials for the very expensive platinum electrodes now used.
But it appears that they can only get it to work at very low current densities. This is not currently practical for industrial purposes and whether it ever will be is open to question.
Well, let's see.
"storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient"
Pumped storage, liquid salt, and batteries, our existing storage technology, are expensive and inefficient, check.
"we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon"
Cornucopian delusions about limitless resources, check.
"an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases"
Where the "unprecedented process" is actually widely generally known as electrolysis, just not to the general public, further providing reassurance of the imminent arrival of the techno-messiah, check.
"The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate ... "
Naively assumes that existing resources are actually plentiful and have no expected future supply crunches, as with NPK, check.
It's pretty standard fare for keeping BAU going for as long as we can.
I think we are being a tad too pessimistic here. The fundamental problem with using electrolysis to store energy in the form of hydrogen, has been the low efficiency (25%ish IIRC). If my brief read was correct, the paper claims they can get something like 80-90%.
Practical use would mean several problems need to be solved:
(1) Being able to build decent capacity for low capital cost.
(2) Being able to keep operations and maintenance low enough.
(3) Having a significance source of time varying power to store (or time varying demand to satisfy). Presumably wind and/or solar.
(4) Being able to utilize the hydrogen to generate dispatchable power competitively.
The first two conditionals are the big ones. We will see. I don't think any one of us is holding our breath.
see the reply to WinstonK above.
The whole sorry hoopla is dissected here
http://climateprogress.org/2008/08/02/major-discovery-from-mit-primed-to...
This "revolutionary discovery" is pretty much feel good bunkum, similar to the "wireless power coils" and "solar focusing dish" that were trumpeted by MIT and the media a few months ago.
Says wolverine,
"This "revolutionary discovery" is pretty much feel good bunkum, similar to the "wireless power coils" and "solar focusing dish" that were trumpeted by MIT and the media a few months ago."
I myself have fallen in and out of being fascinated by hydrogen about six times in my life, going back to my teenage years, but leaving the narrow discussion of the hydrogen option aside for the moment, I have to ask, is there ANY OPTION other than oil and natural gas that would be considered by folks here here as anything other than "feel good bunkum"?
It would have been great if you folks had been around at the end of the 19th century, all of these fossil fuel consuming "feel good bunkum" toys such as automobiles and airplanes would have been dismissed out of hand and we could still be standing in horse dung!
By the way, I am not sure that the phrase "feel good bunkum" would be considered a technical appraisal by most science journals... :-)
RC
Invest in it, Roger. If you are so sure of it, put your own money on the line. Become a billionaire and come back here and laugh at everyone.
Go for it. Prove us all wrong. Not that I expect you will. You never do.
There are dozens of sources on the Internet for the basic math behind the principle of mutual inductance that the "revolutionary" wireless coil uses.
This math can easily be done by anyone familiar with the sine and cosine functions.
After doing it, one realizes that MIT's stated claims that their system is "omnidirectional" are basically a lie. Frankly, persons associated with MIT should be embarrassed at the stream of garbage MIT has been producing of late.
To show that I am not completely pessimistic, I will provide a link to a far more productive solar water heater project being done by Cal-Berkeley students that has already been tested in the field. Their design is already being refined based upon those field trials:
Building affordable solar water heaters
Disclosure: I have ZERO affiliation with Cal-Berkeley or MIT.
Have a pleasant evening.
*ahem*
MIT's claims and the media's claims regarding the wireless coil were two entirely different things. You can't blame MIT for what sausage the J-school grads make of MIT's press releases.
Although, someone in the MIT news office needs a talking-to over this press release:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html
The important thing about this development is that it makes the hydrolysis both energy-efficient and materially cheap (cobalt and phosphorous are cheaper than platinum). That lowers an important hurdle for the use of hydrogen as an energy storage medium. Other hurdles remain, especially in storing the H2 gas, but if you can make it cheaply from any scrap of electricity you get, you can afford to lose some in your storage.
So when it comes to scaling up a hydrogen infrastructure, this really does change things. (Still, only a twit will think we can all get ourselves hydrogen fuel cell cars.)
(Still, only a twit will think we can all get ourselves hydrogen fuel cell cars.)
Awwwwwwah! you just dissed datamunger.
MIT did not trumpet either of these. THe media did.
Way too many adjectives. Total fluff piece. Keep your money in your pocket.
Jeff
Oops