Hydrogen storage breakthrough

[wgatenson04]

Link  

From the article:

With the new hydrogen tablet, it becomes much simpler to use the environmentally-friendly energy of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a non-polluting fuel, but since it is a light gas it occupies too much volume, and it is flammable. Consequently, effective and safe storage of hydrogen has challenged researchers world-wide for almost three decades. At the Technical University of Denmark, DTU, an interdisciplinary team has developed a hydrogen tablet which enables storage and transport of hydrogen in solid form.

The hydrogen tablet is safe and inexpensive. In this respect it is different from most other hydrogen storage technologies. You can literally carry the material in your pocket without any kind of safety precaution. The reason is that the tablet consists solely of ammonia absorbed efficiently in sea-salt. Ammonia is produced by a combination of hydrogen with nitrogen from the surrounding air, and the DTU-tablet therefore contains large amounts of hydrogen. Within the tablet, hydrogen is stored as long as desired, and when hydrogen is needed, ammonia is released through a catalyst that decomposes it back to free hydrogen. When the tablet is empty, you merely give it a "shot" of ammonia and it is ready for use again.

"The technology is a step towards making the society independent of fossil fuels" says Professor Jens Nørskov, director of the Nanotechnology Center at DTU. He, Claus Hviid Christensen, Tue Johannessen, Ulrich Quaade and Rasmus Zink Sørensen are the five researchers behind the invention. The advantages of using hydrogen are numerous. It is CO2-free, and it can be produced by renewable energy sources, e.g. wind power.

I think this is preaty exciting, both for the "hydrogen economy", and wind power, for I belive the future of both are dependant of each other's success.  I have not yet been able to find out how efficent the tablet creation process is, but with the cost of gas, almost anything using hydrogen, made from electricity is bound to be cheaper.  

[D]

[pyrocasto]

Yeah, my question would be how much $ for how much storage? Even if I can hold hydrogen for a long period of time I dont want to only be able to hold a very small amount.

[jomoco]

Excellent post,

Let's hope that it's a real break through and that the owners of the knowlege don't get greedy.

I hope that more info on the basic process and practical applications will be forthcoming soon.

Great post, thanks for sharing as we could all use some good news these days.

jomoco

[electrondady1]

yes this is encouraging news. i'm glad to see some progress being made towards solving the problems of hydrogen storage. i have some reservations though, we might be trading one problem for another, as amonia itself is a very nasty substance.

metal hydrides were the hot ticket about ten years ago but i haven't heard much since.

all i know is , my cheezy little ceramic mag wind geni won't charge a 12v. battery but it will produce enough power for electrolisis!!

[georgeodjungle]

i still use a big truck inertube for storage for my hydrogen BBQer.

i could use an old propane tank,there every ware and free.but not as cool.

here's a how to how to.

hydrogennow.org

more storage would be great! but like all the other post "at what cost"

it's also way better then N.O.S. for that "extra passing power"

and realy realy easy to make.

just be realy carful it does go bang.

ammona is also realy easy to make.

with all that said, it still takes like 2x the power to make hydrogen and like 1/2 the out put power of gas.

and right now liquid hydrogon is like $30+ a gallon.

last year it was over $40.

at least the price is comming down.

i don't think most folks are ready yet... at least for a dollar a mile car.

could be, there buying that "smart car"

[thunderhead]

The orignal press release from DTU is available on the University website.

Their "breakthrough" is converting hydrogen to ammonia and then storing it.  Well, ammonia is easy to store: like methane or butane, it can be liquefied simply by compression.

Turning hydrogen and nitrogen into ammonia has been done by the Haber process since about 1909.  It requires a catalyst and very high temperatures and pressures - way beyond anything that could be done in the lab.  But it is a standard industrial process, not a breakthrough.

Ammonia is also poisonous and corrosive - enough so that most local legislatures treat it as a hazardous gas.  And it stinks.

Unfortunately ammonia doesn't burn in air, and only just burns in pure oxygen. That is because the hydrogen in it bonds strongly with the nitrogen.  The Haber process of combining the hydrogen with nitrogen releases 92.4kJ/mol of nitrogen, or 30.8kJ/mol of hydrogen.  But burning hydrogen in air releases 258.8kJ/mol - so turning it into ammonia before loading it on the vehicle loses about 12% of the chemical energy.  That's probably less than the hit you'd take liquefying the hydrogen.

But it does get over the storage problem: which might go some way to making an "ammonia economy" work.  I don't think ammonia will be stored as an "ammonia tablet", though - it'll end up compressed in tanks, like LPG is on cars today.

It'll also not be much use to homebrewers, though, since the Haber process is way too high pressures for the garage.  However, if we can get hold of certain products common on farms, making ammonia is not impossible. :-)

[fishfarm]

I suspect a considerable amount of research is being done in this area. Another recently proposed storage method "involves storing the gas between layers of graphite just nanometres deep, could help in the quest for practical hydrogen-storage devices for fuel cells.Graphite can store hydrogen better than other materials, such as carbon nanotubes, because it is cheap, non-toxic and easy to prepare (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. to be published)."

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/9/7/10/1

[asheets]

United Nuclear is on the verge of commercializing a similar product.  From what I understand, you charge a tank that is full of anhydrite crystal (they call it "metal hydride) with H2 gas to store the stuff.  To liberate the gas, just apply heat.

Their application starts their vehicles with gasoline, and uses exhaust heat or an electric heater to warm up the tanks.  Once the liberated H2 gets to a certain pressure, the fuel system switches over to using H2.  Each tank is going to cost something like $2200 (which will get you about 100 miles).  A complete setup, including 4 tanks, the solar-powered hydrogen still, and misc hookup parts will be about $10k.

Read about it and judge for yourself.  The price is too high for me right now, but in the future...

http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/

[thunderhead]

From the website:- September 14th, 2005      Our first serious problem has arisen. Hydrogen Embrittlement has been detected in some engine components, in some cases severely. Hydrogen Embrittlement occurs when Hydrogen gas dissolves into the structure of certain metals (usually Aluminum & Steels). It can cause cracking and failure of metal components.

Hydrogen embrittlement has been mentioned in relation to storing hydrogen several times on this forum.

A whole host of other technical issues have also been mentioned, and I'd expect to see those mentioned on this website in due course.

I'd also be interested to find out the weights and volumes of these tanks, and how much hydrogen they actually store.  Internal combustion engines are rarely very efficient - typical figures are 15% to 25% efficiency - and hydrogen is not a good fuel for volumetric energy density.

It's also a very bad fuel in terms of energy in to energy out.  Converting electrical energy to hydrogen is rarely achieved at better than 60% efficiency.  20% of 60% is 12%: so 12% of the energy you buy from the electric utility to make hydrogen is actually coming out of your car's wheels.

Add to that the fact that most electric utility generation only produces 35% to 50% of the fuel as electricity, and you might end up using 6% to as little as 4% of the total fuel's energy to push your car down the road.

Remember, a petrol car delivers 15% to 25%: and an electric car produces 80% to 90% of the electricity - or 28% to 45% of the energy of the original fuel.

We need to get from that 15% to that 45% - not from 15% to 4%!