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Invention could solve 'bottleneck' in developing pollution-free cars
Posted on Monday, December 04, 2006 @ 21:58:02 UTC by vlad
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Hydrogen-powered cars that do not pollute the environment are
a step closer thanks to a new discovery which promises to solve the
main problem holding back the technology. Whilst hydrogen is thought to
be an ideal fuel for vehicles, producing only water on combustion, its
widespread use has been limited by the lack of a safe, efficient system
for onboard storage.
Scientists have experimented with ways of storing
hydrogen by locking the gas into metal lattices, but metal hydrides
only work at temperatures above 300°C and metal organic framework
materials only work at liquid nitrogen temperatures (-198°C).
Now scientists at the University of Bath have invented a material
which stores and releases hydrogen at room temperature, at the flick of
a switch, and promises to help make hydrogen power a viable clean
technology for the future.
Although its fuel to weight ratio is insufficient to make an entire
hydrogen tank from it, the material could be used in combination with
metal hydride sources to store and release energy instantaneously
whilst the main tank reaches sufficient temperature, 300°C, to work.
They hope to have the fully-working prototype ready within two to three years.
"The problem of how to store hydrogen has been a major bottleneck
in the development of the hydrogen power technology," said Dr Andrew
Weller from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Bath (UK).
"Hydrogen has a low density and it only condenses into liquid form
at -252°C so it is difficult to use conventional storage systems such
as high-pressure gas containers which would need steel walls at least
three inches thick, making them too heavy and too large for cars.
"The US Department of the Energy has said that it wants six per
cent of the weight of hydrogen storage systems to be hydrogen in order
to give new hydrogen powered cars the same kind of mileage per tank of
fuel as petrol-based systems.
"Whilst metal hydrides and metal organic framework materials can
achieve this kind of ratio, they only work at extremes of temperature
which are difficult to engineer into an ordinary vehicle.
"Our new material works at room temperature and at atmospheric
pressure at the flick of a switch. Because it is made from a heavy
metal (Rhodium), its weight to fuel ratio is low, 0.1 per cent, but it
could certainly fill the time lag between a driver putting their foot
on the accelerator and a metal hydride fuel tank getting up to
temperature.
"We are really very excited about the potential this technology offers."
The University of Bath researchers made the discovery whilst
investigating the effect that hydrogen has on metals. Having
constructed an organo-metallic compound containing six rhodium (a type
of metal that is also currently found in catalytic converters in cars)
atoms and 12 hydrogen atoms, they began studying the chemical
properties of the complex with researchers in Oxford (UK) and Victoria
(Canada).
They soon realised that the material would absorb
two molecules of hydrogen at room temperature and atmospheric pressure
– and would release the molecules when a small electric current was
applied to the material.
This kind of take up and release at the atomic scale makes the
material an ideal candidate for solving the hydrogen storage problem.
The researchers are now looking at ways of printing the material
onto sheets that could be stacked together and encased to form a
storage tank.
Potentially this tank could sit alongside a metal hydride tank and
would kick into action as soon as the driver put their foot on the
accelerator, giving the metal hydride store the time to heat up to
300°C - the temperature that normal petrol-powered engines run at.
"With the growing concern over climate change and our over-reliance
on fossil fuels, hydrogen provides us with a useful alternative," said
Dr Weller.
"We have been able to use hydrogen to power fuel cells, which
combine hydrogen and oxygen to form electricity and energy, for a
number of years.
"But whenever the fuel is considered for cars we hit the stumbling block of how to store hydrogen gas in everyday applications.
"The new material absorbs the hydrogen into its structure and
literally bristles with molecules of the gas. At the flick of a switch
it rejects the hydrogen, allowing us to turn the supply of the gas on
and off as we wish.
"The fact that we discovered the material by chance is a fantastic advertisement for the benefits of curiosity driven research.
"In principle it should be possible to produce ready amounts of
hydrogen using sea water and solar cells, giving the next generation of
vehicles an inexhaustible supply of environmentally-friendly fuel.
"In fact other research in Bath’s Department of Chemistry is at the
forefront of the solar cell research, new battery technologies and new
fuel cell technologies which could help unlock what many people are
calling the hydrogen economy.
Source: University of Bath
Article from: http://www.physorg.com/news84450917.html
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andy janson (Score: 1)
by vlad on Tuesday, December 05, 2006 @ 21:09:52 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.zpenergy.com | Submitted to the main page anonimously: to best explain this ..this will not require any money but it will require several contacts in very high places to approach a series of industries that from 1919 to 1925 built a series of advanced [for the time ] production lines that had a byproduct that will strip the bonds off fresh water to release oxygen and hydrogen...the projects were cancelled in 1925 account of a ''runaway processes'' that cracked the cast iron pipes of the era..i collect old technocal books and i have a 1938 book on the process..and the reasons it was cancelled ..yet today all the materal process can be overcome with ''off the shelf'' parts and equipment to allow local hydrogen production and soon home hydrogen production at very low cost..cheaper then tap water is now ....to read what i am doing please goooogle ''andy janson hansard'' a goverment group i was asked to appear before or phone me at home at 519-652-0285 in ontario canada
thankyou
andy
to make the whole world hydrogen based it is a process called the janson process...it is based on a 1919 to 1925 industrial process that has been abandoned account it was unrelated to hydrogen but the byproduct was surplus hydrogen..when you understand the bond that holds a single unit of oxygen to two units of hydrogen at 104.5 degrees of angle with the hydrogen unit having no magnetic field you will understand that the bond can be ''stripped away'' with the janson process at little or no cost..the 1923 process[of which i have the 1938 papers on the subject] used 1/2 unit of energy to release the bonds for one unit of hydrogen at its colorice vale [heat] yet with 2005/06 off the shelf equipment it only requires .2 unitsof energy to release one unit of hydrogen energy...at first it sounds too simple yet the energy has all ways been here it just has to be fine tuned to be pure hydrogen to be compressed and bottled for power use...
please contact me at home at 519-652-0285
andy |
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Re: Invention could solve 'bottleneck' in developing pollution-free cars (Score: 1)
by seanu on Thursday, December 14, 2006 @ 01:05:38 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) | " Hydrogen-powered cars that do not pollute"
They will pollute, they'll increase the water vapour content of the atmosphere. A ZPE car would also pollute, it will expell heat, either directly or indirectly as friction. All vehicles we could use will expell some form of "pollution", but which is least worse? Water vapour is the most potent greenhouse gas, start burning water at the rate we burn "fossil" fuels and we might have a worse effect on the atmosphere.
That side of the "hydrogen economy" seems to be totally ignored.
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Hydrogen-powered cars do not pollute! (Score: 1)
by Xels on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 @ 17:49:46 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) | I’m sorry but you are very wrong. The earth is 80 percent water,
97 percent of which is salt water (or undrinkable water). 2 percent of earth’s
water is locked in the icecaps and glaciers, and only 1 percent of water is
drinkable. As population goes up people are going to need more fresh water, and
the only way there going to get that is from more rain. Everyday the sun evaporates
about 7 trillion gallons of water every minute. Wait hold on let me repeat
that, 7 TRILLION GALLONS/MIN
You say that water vapor is a greenhouse gas. Well you’re
right, but as water vapor increases in the atmosphere, more of it will eventually
condense into clouds, which are more able to reflect incoming solar radiation
(thus allowing less energy to reach the Earth's surface and heat it up). There
is no way ANYONE can say water vapor is pollution if it’s one of the most abundant
things in the atmosphere and one the most important substance for life in the
universe. As humans we consume water at a rate of 340 Billion Gallons per year
just in the US.
153 people are born every minute on this planet and more people consume more
water. Slowing the process at which water is evaporated and recycled. When we
burn hydrogen at the rate of fossil fuels we increase the rate of this cycle,
making it balanced which brings more fresh water to places that need it. |
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