Danish researchers develop hydrogen tablets

One of the drawbacks to hydrogen technology has been the large space required to store the hydrgen fuel but it looks like that may no longer be a problem. Researchers in Denmark have developed hydrogen tablets that will allow hydrogen to occupy the same amount of space as a regukar gasoline tank.

]dtu.dk

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.

“Should you drive a car 600 km using gaseous hydrogen at normal pressure, it would require a fuel tank with a size of nine cars. With our technology, the same amount of hydrogen can be stored in a normal gasoline tank”, says Professor Claus Hviid Christensen, Department of Chemistry at DTU.

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.

This is great news.
It alleviates one of the fears that people had about hydrogen vehicles, the combustibility. It also makes the storage and possibly the transport of hydrogen fuel more practical.

What's the catalyst? What are the energy losses during the reactions that chemically trap the hydrogen and those that release it?

More importantly, how are these losses justified when Li Ion batteries have progressed to the point that they will be economically feasible in just a few years? They're just electric cars, after all, and I'd bet good money that batteries would get you three times further with the same amount of net energy.

EDIT:
See what I mean here.

80% charge in less than a minute? Better than shovelling tablets into your car. Better than losing half of the electrical energy splitting water into hydrogen and then whatever else, probably losing a total of 70% or more of the initial energy by the time it gets a car moving.

Do some math. 1000 charges at an (assumed) range of 300 miles for each complete discharge and one weekly charge (assumed) and you have a battery that after 19 years loses just 1% of it's capacity. A conservative estimate would put that car 150,000 miles ahead of a hydrogen vehicle on the same amount of net energy.

I just don't get you hydrogen junkies..

[edit on 9/12/2005 by shbaz]

Has anyone noticed how this story was not picked up by ANY of the major news outlets? I don't know, to me this seems like a large breakthrough, and step twords the "hydrogen economy" or atleast a feasable way to start introducing hydrogen/electric cars. Is it a cover-up, or just not as big a breakthrough as I thought?

I have read that "we" will not be able to swich to pure hydrogen cars for at least 5-12 years due to inabillity to store enough hydrogen in the gas form, pressures 10,000PSI+ required for a workable auto.

AceOfBase:
It also makes the storage and possibly the transport of hydrogen fuel more practical.

I think the idea of "transporting" hydrogen, other than extremely local distances, is retarted, and a untrue obsticle of the hydrogen economy. Use the electrical grid that is already in place to distribute the power to local electrolizers, gas up there.

shbaz:
80% charge in less than a minute? Better than shovelling tablets into your car. Better than losing half of the electrical energy splitting water into hydrogen and then whatever else, probably losing a total of 70% or more of the initial energy by the time it gets a car moving.

Yes, the new Li Ion are great, and there uses for regenerative-breaking is great. But you aren't taking into account the losses in charging, and discharging a battery are arround 40%, while modern electrolizers are %92+ efficent in cracking water into hydrogen. Also a battery large enough to move a car 300mi would cost like $25,000 and add a signifigant amount of weight to the car. BTW the "whatever else" is oxygen. Granted the 92% is not taking into account the the losses from leakage, and the efficency of the fuel cell itself.

The question for me is what is the energy efficency of the ammonia creation? There must be some losses.

What we need is a Hydrogen, Li Ion hybrid, to get the best of both worlds.

I posted about this a few days ago in another thread:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Here are some more sources:
Hydrogen storage
Danish breakthrough in using hydrogen as fuel
Article on slashdot

Originally posted by cadric
I posted about this a few days ago in another thread:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

I missed that thread.
Thanks for the links.

Originally posted by Wgatenson
Yes, the new Li Ion are great, and there uses for regenerative-breaking is great. But you aren't taking into account the losses in charging, and discharging a battery are arround 40%, while modern electrolizers are %92+ efficent in cracking water into hydrogen. Also a battery large enough to move a car 300mi would cost like $25,000 and add a signifigant amount of weight to the car. BTW the "whatever else" is oxygen. Granted the 92% is not taking into account the the losses from leakage, and the efficency of the fuel cell itself.

Check your sources - it's the other way around. The only known way to make water cracking more electrically efficient is by superheating it - and that heat comes from somewhere.

You haven't read any books about batteries newer than 30 years old, have you? It's kind of important to stay current if you're gonna go quoting huge off-base numbers like that.

At the rate Lithium batteries are decreasing in price I can see it being a lot cheaper soon.

Wanna talk about expense? How much does a hydrogen fuel cell cost, and how much would you estimate the complete system for converting whatever fuel would cost?

To put a stop to all the nay-sayers out there saying that the energy for vreating Hydrogen would need to come from somewhere, you can actually use micro-organisms to to vreat the fuel required for a Hydrogen economy.

This would mean that you wouldn't need to use a source of energy, say from fossil fuels, to electrolise water into Hydrogen. You could just let a tank of little bugs do it for you.

Same with this new Ammonia solution...little bugs would happily chirp away all day making all the fuel you wanted. All you need is a big vat and some good Ol' Sunshine.

Yep. All you need is 300,000 square miles full of vats filled with little bugs, chirping away in the sunshine.

Originally posted by shbaz
Yep. All you need is 300,000 square miles full of vats filled with little bugs, chirping away in the sunshine.

Yeah, you can tell you dont have a clue what your talking about.

Originally posted by stumason
Yeah, you can tell you dont have a clue what your talking about.

Talking in the mirror? Biological organisms like algae have nowhere near the effiency of sunlight conversion into energy as solar panels.

Originally posted by Simon666

Originally posted by stumason
Yeah, you can tell you dont have a clue what your talking about.

Biological organisms like algae have nowhere near the effiency of sunlight conversion into energy as solar panels.

Simon and Shbaz are correct stumason, it's a neat idea that could be used for some applications but unless we somehow increase the efficiency of these organisms through Genetic Modification it will never stand up to Wind/Solar/Geothermal. Algea will be much more usefull in clean coal technology as it asorbes and renders pollutants so benign you can eat it as a health food.

Hydrogen Hopes

Click on the Watch Online icon to get the lowdown



[edit on 14-9-2005 by sardion2000]

what happens to the nitrogen released in this process? won't there be nitrogen pollution?
daved

Originally posted by shbaz
80% charge in less than a minute? Better than shovelling tablets into your car. Better than losing half of the electrical energy splitting water into hydrogen and then whatever else, probably losing a total of 70% or more of the initial energy by the time it gets a car moving.

This battery was meant for cellphones and PDAs, but obviously not for the cars.

Shbaz, if you know physics at all, please try to calculate the current needed to charge a car battery (in a real electric car) in 1 min, when hooked up to your home power outlet. I get between 1 and 100 kiloAmps, even discounting the efficiency of teh battery.

A current of 10 kAmps will probably vaporize your house and may cause serious damage to its inhabitants.


[edit on 14-9-2005 by Aelita]

Originally posted by Wgatenson
Has anyone noticed how this story was not picked up by ANY of the major news outlets? I don't know, to me this seems like a large breakthrough, and step twords the "hydrogen economy" or atleast a feasable way to start introducing hydrogen/electric cars. Is it a cover-up, or just not as big a breakthrough as I thought?

When's the last time a major news source has reporting anything that could be considered helpful to people?

Originally posted by Aelita

Originally posted by shbaz
80% charge in less than a minute? Better than shovelling tablets into your car. Better than losing half of the electrical energy splitting water into hydrogen and then whatever else, probably losing a total of 70% or more of the initial energy by the time it gets a car moving.

This battery was meant for cellphones and PDAs, but obviously not for the cars.

Shbaz, if you know physics at all, please try to calculate the current needed to charge a car battery (in a real electric car) in 1 min, when hooked up to your home power outlet. I get between 1 and 100 kiloAmps, even discounting the efficiency of teh battery.

A current of 10 kAmps will probably vaporize your house and may cause serious damage to its inhabitants.


[edit on 14-9-2005 by Aelita]

In the article it says specifically that it has applications for cars.

Yes I know physics, I'm an electrical engineering Junior.

These would either need to be charged by special fueling stations with a huge capacitor array or access to a HV power line. Super-capacitors could carry that charge in a relatively small space, but would be super-expensive to match. In other words, you wouldn't charge this battery in one minute at home.

Where did that come from? I didn't even imply that, you just said it out of the blue...

Knowing what happens when you put huge amounts of power on wire not sufficent for it, I can say with reasonable certainty that it wouldn't vaporize your house. It would vaporize the copper wire so fast that it'd shoot out of the PCB insulation, which would remain almost completely unharmed because the copper vaporized so fast.

I haven't done this personally, but my experimental methods teacher said it was such.. and reasonably at home your breakers would blow before it had a chance to do that.

Originally posted by Dasher
what happens to the nitrogen released in this process? won't there be nitrogen pollution?
daved

Check wikipedia for the nitrogen content of air and stop worrying about it.

[edit on 9/14/2005 by shbaz]

Originally posted by shbaz
In the article it says specifically that it has applications for cars.

Yes I know physics, I'm an electrical engineering Junior.

These would either need to be charged by special fueling stations with a huge capacitor array or access to a HV power line. Super-capacitors could carry that charge in a relatively small space, but would be super-expensive to match. In other words, you wouldn't charge this battery in one minute at home.

The article says it can be used for hybrid vehicles which only have to provide power for a short while and it doesn't bear the full load of powering the vehicle. It just offsets the load from the combustion engine.

The General motors EV1 has a Max. Power of 104.0 kW and an average consumption of 10.28 kW at 60MPH constant speed. It consumed 27.04 kWh to travel 160.6 miles (the range of the vehicle).

That battery took 7 hours to recharge, which isn't too bad.

I don't think the 60 second charge is possible for a massive car battery.
There would probably be the same health concerns about charging stations with that kind of power as they have about high voltage overhead power lines.

According to an article on wikipedia a 7kWh battery pack would require a power source of 336kW for that 60 second charge. A typical household outlet can provide around 1.5kW in the US. That's a long way away from 336KW. That 7kWh charge would last less than an hour at 60MPH and take you a distance of about 40 miles.

I think we'll have to rely on overnight charging if battery vehicles are ever used.

If battery electrics ever become popular and thousands of cars are plugged into the grid I think it will be a big strain on the power companies. Thare are some utility companies which have to load shed when lots of people are merely running air conditioners during the summertime so it'll be even worse with vehicles added to that demand.

I think hybrids are a much better choice and they can be complemented with plug-in technology.

en.wikipedia.org...
ev.inel.gov...

[edit on 14-9-2005 by AceOfBase]

Originally posted by AceOfBase
The article says it can be used for hybrid vehicles which only have to provide power for a short while and it doesn't bear the full load of powering the vehicle. It just offsets the load from the combustion engine.

That depends strongly on which hybrid vehicle it would go into. I would also suppose that since there's a near-zero percent market for EVs it would initially go into hybrid vehicles.

Originally posted by AceOfBase
I don't think the 60 charge is possible for a massive car battery.
There would probably be the same health concerns about charging stations with that kind of power as they have about high voltage overhead power lines.

No they wouldn't, they'd need normal power lines without the normal household current limiters or a large capacitor array which would slowly accumulate the necessary charge. EDIT: Yes I did say HV power lines, but I think you're implying ultra-high power transmission lines while I was referring to the everyday ones you see in every neighborhood.

Originally posted by AceOfBaseAccording to an article on wikipedia a 7kWh battery pack would require a power source of 336kW for that 60 second charge. A typical household outlet can provide around 1.5kW in the US. That's a long way away from 336KW. That 7kWh charge would last less than an hour at 60MPH and take you a distance of about 40 miles.

I think we'll have to rely on overnight charging if battery vehicles are ever used.

Why? Do you think for some reason people are unwilling to go to fueling stations for three minutes to power their vehicles and pay for it? It sure as hell seems like it, and I don't need to conclusively prove you wrong because there's a world outside of your room to do it for me.

Who says we're limited to a 7kwh battery pack anyway?

Originally posted by AceOfBaseIf battery electrics ever become popular and thousands of cars are plugged into the grid I think it will be a big strain on the power companies. Thare are some utility companies which have to load shed when lots of people are merely running air conditioners during the summertime so it'll be even worse with vehicles added to that demand.

So would generating a ton of hydrogen. You want to say that the world should convert to a system that uses twice as much energy as an EV and then complain about the power draw of EVs? My main point is that it's stupid to waste so much energy making hydrogen only to lose half of it when you could be using EVs which are cheaper and more efficient.

It's rather ignorant to assume that supply and demand wouldn't cause extra power companies to tie into the grid as well.

Originally posted by AceOfBaseI think hybrids are a much better choice and they can be complemented with plug-in technology.

So do I, but not for any of the reasons you've given.

[edit on 9/14/2005 by shbaz]

Originally posted by shbaz
Who says we're limited to a 7kwh battery pack anyway?

If you used a 27kWh battery it would requre a power source capable of about 1,300kW to charge that battery in 1 minute (using the wiki figures).

A typical gas station around here has about 3 or 4 vehicles filling up at any one time and others vehicles waiting in line to fill up so theres not really much time to resupply the capacitor with energy in between vehicles.

Originally posted by AceOfBase
If you used a 27kWh battery it would requre a power source capable of about 1,300kW to charge that battery in 1 minute (using the wiki figures).

A typical gas station around here has about 3 or 4 vehicles filling up at any one time and others vehicles waiting in line to fill up so theres not really much time to resupply the capacitor with energy in between vehicles.

Who says the size of a capacitor bank is limited to the power required for a single charge?

Do you even realize how much power is available through a standard 10kv distribution line?

You're talking about minor problems while advocating something else with truly major problems.

Why do you dismiss all of the problems with hydrogen generation/distribution/storage/efficency so easy and dismiss EVs with minor gripes like that?

EDIT:
For even more clarity in case you're still consumed with this baseless argument, a friend of mine has a pole pig in his back yard to do experiments with HV in an educational science group I'm involved in. He determined that it will withstand about 3 amps at 14 kV. That means the power system is designed to send 42 kW to a standard home, from a single tap of a line designed to serve dozens of homes.

[edit on 9/15/2005 by shbaz]

Originally posted by Aelita

A current of 10 kAmps will probably vaporize your house and may cause serious damage to its inhabitants.

I have GOT to try this on my enemy's house... hehehe (insert evil smilie here).

This sounds too cool...