Setting aside our usual "show me the infrastructure" hydrogen economy skepticism for a moment, it looks like we may have a winner! The AFP (via Yahoo News) is reporting that Penn State researchers have discovered a way to generate hydrogen that produces more hydrogen energy than the process consumes in electrical energy. [NB: for those of you wishing to cite basic laws of thermodynamics, electrical energy is not the only source of energy in the process.] Poor efficiency rates and low yields have led many alt. energy experts to consider hydrogen an also-ran even before it technically ran. Apparently, adding acetic acid to the production process allows scientists to produce hydrogen at 99% of the theoretical maximum yield. Theoretically, that's more than enough efficiency to make hydrogen a viable energy source. Even better, acetic acid is a common byproduct of glucose fermentation, which is typically discarded. Isn't it wonderful when a plan comes together? Expect tons of complaining from flyover, er, corn land, and much rejoicing from grocery aisles as the price of beef and dairy go back down to reasonable levels. That is, if this isn't a bunch of hot (cold?) air.
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Penn engineers are by far the smartest, most creative, and most forward thinking of all engineers. They have definitely nailed this!
Awww…and I wanted to throw in a thermodynamic reference from The Simpsons:
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made today is a joke! It just keeps going faster and faster.
Lisa! Get in here. In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Wow…cool. So maybe America isn’t just a nation of salesmen and mouth-breathers.
I assume this hydrogen is still coming from natural gas (i.e. the other energy in the process)? Still a fossil fuel, but at least its domestic production. The problem there is heating costs will jump up with automobile use demanding natural gas production. But its better than switching farmland to corn oil fields.
The article says the hydrogen comes from "biodegradable organic material," so it wouldn't take away from natural gas supplies. The EROEI is only 1:2.8 or something and there are still delivery and storage problems, but this is interesting.
So, I’m reading the comments, and between my brain being fried from dealing with dealers who want their damned Malibus, the random call of someone wondering where their Corvette is, trying to explain to some guys why they shouldn’t hold breath for a hybrid Tahoe, and the image of The Stig trying to comprehend a cell phone still fresh in my mind, I saw acetic, but my mind processed it as acidic. So I was sitting here, reading about hydrogen, and all I was thinking was…
“They used acidic acid. How did that work out for them?”
Show me.
In other words, I’ll believe it when I see it. I hope that this is true, I really do, but for some reason I bet we’ll never hear another word about it. If we can produce hydrogen efficiently, I would be very enthusiastic to push it forward and start discussing feasibility, but I remain skeptical. I must also reiterate that hydrogen produces water vapor which is a much more potent green-house gas than carbon-dioxide. That doesn’t bother me personally as I don’t put much stock in global warming hype, but it seems hypocritical, or more likely ignorant, that those in Al Gore’s camp are pushing hydrogen as a fuel of the future.
Yeah, and burning corn-based ethanol releases ozone, which while it isn’t so much a greenhouse gas, is still a major component of smog and causes untold cases of respiratory distress each year. So what would I vote for? The byproduct that I can capture and use to water my plants with. But then, I live in Atlanta, home of the wholesale outdoor watering ban.
Using Hydrogen is still inefficient any way you slice it and dice it. Containment is expensive, distance the auto will travel is still no better than Lit Io batteries and the vehicle cost is way over mortal peoples budget.
Instead of using energy to product Hydrogen just plug in your car and save the energy losses in the conversion process.
One point of the research seems to be to find an efficient means of producing hydrogen that is carbon neutral, so this is not from natural gas. The original article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0706379104v1.pdf This is the introductory paragraph: "Hydrogen gas has tremendous potential as an environmentally acceptable energy carrier for vehicles, but most hydrogen is generated from nonrenewable fossil fuels such as natural gas. Here, we show that efficient and sustainable hydrogen production is possible from any type of biodegradable organic matter by electrohydrogenesis. In this process, protons and electrons released by exoelectrogenic bacteria in specially designed reactors (based on modifying microbial fuel cells) are catalyzed to form hydrogen gas through the addition of a small voltage to the circuit. By improving the materials and reactor architecture, hydrogen gas was produced at yields of 2.01–3.95 mol/mol (50–99% of the theoretical maximum) at applied voltages of 0.2 to 0.8 V using acetic acid, a typical dead-end product of glucose or cellulose fermentation. At an applied voltage of 0.6 V, the overall energy efficiency of the process was 288% based solely on electricity applied, and 82% when the heat of combustion of acetic acid was included in the energy balance, at a gas production rate of 1.1 m3 of H2 per cubic meter of reactor per day. Direct high-yield hydrogen gas production was further demonstrated by using glucose, several volatile acids (acetic, butyric, lactic, propionic, and valeric), and cellulose at maximum stoichiometric yields of 54–91% and overall energy efficiencies of 64–82%. This electrohydrogenic process thus provides a highly efficient route for producing hydrogen gas from renewable and carbon-neutral biomass resources." And then the jargon really begins…
P.S. The main source of the energy embodied in the hydrogen that comes out of this process is the organic matter (i.e. plant matter) that gets fed into it. There are microorganisms involved in breaking it down, and a small amount of electricity is involved, which apparently stimulates the process and results in higher hydrogen yields. (Or perhaps it disrupts the conversion of ions into ATP and glucose in the microorganisms, which causes the energy instead to bubble out as hydrogen).
Depending on the source of the organic matter, this may we be and energy-positive process (making use of captured solar energy that would otherwise be dissipated to the environment), and a more effective use of electricity than just sticking it straight into a battery.
The picture says it all. Hydrogen is stored at very high pressure; I’d hate to be in the way when one of those tanks ruptured.
I hope the story is true, but we still have enormous H2 generation/delivery/storage issues to be resolved.
Weren’t we all supposed to have nuclear-powered cars by now?
I must also reiterate that hydrogen produces water vapor which is a much more potent green-house gas than carbon-dioxide. That doesn’t bother me personally as I don’t put much stock in global warming hype, but it seems hypocritical, or more likely ignorant, that those in Al Gore’s camp are pushing hydrogen as a fuel of the future.
No, it’s not ignorant, because in fact hydrogen produces less water vapor per mile than burning gasoline.
The journal this report appears in, proceedings of the national academy of sciences, is one of the most highly respected and hard to get into scientific journals in the world.
Re:I must also reiterate that hydrogen produces water vapor which is a much more potent green-house gas than carbon-dioxide.
It is true that water vapor is a greenhouse gas and that water vapor is responsible for something on the order of 85% of the total ‘greenhouse effect’.
However, water vapor is not persistent in the atmosphere and quickly moves towards dynamic equilibrium with the Earth’s oceans.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
A fleet of hydrogen-powered cars spewing water vapor *might* cause a bit more rainfall, but that’s about it.
@Megan Benoit
The byproduct that I can capture and use to water my plants with. But then, I live in Atlanta, home of the wholesale outdoor watering ban.
I love such bans – Karl Marx isn’t totally dead even in the reddest of states.
Did the economic brain stems at the Atlanta Water Dept even consider raising rates for heavy users?
And how often do the personality defective types water inspectors drive by to see if you’re watering your roses? Do they have a video camera? Some places in Florida do…
You should hire a tanker truck to water your lawn/garden. Or will you get fined??? Or just evil stares from the neighbors?
“However, water vapor is not persistent in the atmosphere and quickly moves towards dynamic equilibrium with the Earth’s oceans.” if h2o’s not persistent how is it such a high percent of the atmospheres total gasses? i know every things thinner as it goes up in altitude but is co2 more than water vapor at 60,000 feet? but to tell the truth im not worried about either gas warming us.
Water vapor is about 1% of the earth’s atmosphere, while CO2 is about 0.038% of the atmosphere — there is many times more water vapor in the atmosphere than CO2.
But conflating high levels and dynamic stability misses the point. There is a lot of water vapor in the atmosphere, and it acts as a greenhouse gas, but the amount we have is stable and we’ve lived with it for a long time — it’s healthy. Dynamic stability means that even if we pump a whole bunch more vapor into the atmosphere, average concentrations won’t rise. Instead, it will come out as rain quickly enough. Since we need some amount of greenhouse effect to keep things from freezing over at night, and since the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere doesn’t change even if we pump more in, it’s a safe avenue.
On the other hand, CO2 does not seem to be dynamically stable in the earth’s atmosphere. The more we pump in, the more stays up there. Concentrations go up. It’s doesn’t precipitate out or self-correct in some other manner. In another world, an increase in CO2 concentrations might stimulate plant growth so much that they take up the excess and return things to normal levels. But that isn’t our world.
“Instead of using energy to product Hydrogen just plug in your car and save the energy losses in the conversion process.”
Hold on a second there. There is significant energy loss in converting electricity to chemical energy and then back into electricity. That is what a battery does. Published numbers put the most efficient battery systems somewhere around 75%. I other words, only 75% of the electricity used to charge the battery becomes available to drive the car’s electric motor.
Fuel cells are even worse in that respect. Most estimates put them at around 36-45%. Burning the hydrogen is even worse.
so people buying carbon credits are getting ripped off cause trees theyre planting arent going to soak up any more co2 in this world?
Human water vapor emissions are pretty much meaningless, considering that tropospheric concentrations are limited by temperature. More here.
Biomass from tree plantations is just one source that could be carbon neutral with this method (assuming sustainable production), or better if the carbon by-product is sequestered.
Still, I need to see some peer review before making any judgment on the new process and whether it will successfully compete with other alternatives. Particularly in applications where hydrogen storage and distribution will result in energy loss.