Hydrogen Electrolysis Efficiency Breakthrough

Sxotty

Legend
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/03/quantumsphere-n.html
QuantumSphere has demonstrated production of hydrogen and oxygen in an alkaline electrolyzer with 85% percent efficiency under ambient conditions, making it a commercially viable replacement for fossil fuel-based production methods (e.g., steam methane reforming), according to the company. The DOE 2010 target for the efficiency of electrolysis is 75%.
This is truly amazing to me. At that kind of efficiency fuel cell back up for wind power suddenly makes a whole lot more sense, or using nuclear power to produce hydrogen instead of CTL.
 
If this is true, then wow. If the process scales well then using green or nuclear methods to cheaply produce hydrogen would be viable and affordable. Now lets see some breakthroughs in delivery and storage :D
 
At 85% using nuclear to generate hydrogen seems like a good course of action. I still don't know why we don't just go with electric vehicles and install power rails or something into the roadways. Then you wouldn't need large batteries or ultra caps in the vehicles to begin with.
 
I still don't know why we don't just go with electric vehicles and install power rails or something into the roadways. Then you wouldn't need large batteries or ultra caps in the vehicles to begin with.

a) on a city-wide and cross-country wide scale it'd be quite an expense tearing up every single road
b) metal supply...
c) you would have to make it flexible enough for people to deviate off the rails.

There are some buses in our city that are connected to an overhead electric grid via long rods. It's flexible enough that they can turn and switch lanes, but that's obviously not practical or safe to set up in all areas of a city, namely suburbs... (These buses are limited to the city centre).
 
a) on a city-wide and cross-country wide scale it'd be quite an expense tearing up every single road
b) metal supply...
c) you would have to make it flexible enough for people to deviate off the rails.

There are some buses in our city that are connected to an overhead electric grid via long rods. It's flexible enough that they can turn and switch lanes, but that's obviously not practical or safe to set up in all areas of a city, namely suburbs... (These buses are limited to the city centre).

A tesla coil on every corner.

There's a lot of issues with making a power grid to support vehicles and then the question is, who gets to pay for it?
 
Those high voltage boxes are dangerous enough! And [strike]if[/strike] when some drunk-ass piles through the tesla coil, then said electric vehicles would be screwed for the area it covers. :p We should have done it years ago when things were small-scale. Now where's my Mr. Fusion DeLorean. ;)
 
This sounds reminiscent of the chemical engineer with the grooved catalyst balls in florida featured in Equinox.

If you haven't seen Equinox, I highly recommend it. It's amazing.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2464139837181538044

IT isn't the same really. If that is true, it is pretty nifty. The link I posted is true, and is still nifty, but not >100% efficient or anything.


That video is full of some crazy ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Meyer
Not particularly convincing.
 
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Any purported miracle technique which produces >100% efficiency is somewhat suspicious in the first place. The fact that this one was developed in the 1990s but has never been used by anyone and is surrounded by a conspiracy theory over the death of the 'inventor' makes it even more improbable, even more so when you read the wiki link. If the plans are freely available on-line, what's stopping anybody producing a device? A SWAT team funded by Big Oil roaming around the world secretly assassinating scientists?

As for the other link, it sounds very interesting - 85% efficiency is very impressive. If only we could solve the Hydrogen storage problem!
 
Moving H2 around shouldn't be too big of a problem as if I understand correctly this method could be used in local gas station to produce H2 from tap water. Of course there still is the problem of having good enough storage for gas inside the car.
 
Any form of distributed electrolysis would require a revamping of the electric grid.
Producing enough hydrogen for a day's worth of customers is going to require a lot of current, even if the process were 100% efficient.
To get decent output, every gas station would need a better connection to the power grid, which in turn requires that the power grid stretch its high capacity lines far afield.
 
Yes, power supply for the gas stations will be a bit problematic, no doubt about that. Anoyone likes to guess what is cheaper, upgrading the (aged) power grid or developing and producing good H2 transportation containers?

In my opinion uprading the grid will be better in the long run. Energy demand is constantly rising anyways. With distributed H2 production grid has to be upgraded faster than without it.
 
There is no over 100% efficiency, that's an oxymoron. 100% would be Perpetuum Mobile already, over 100% would indeed be a true miracle.

Well, obviously. That's why I described it as a "purported miracle technique"!

Anyway, the discussion about the 'Water Fuel Cell' nonsense is an unfortunate deflection away from the original post about the claimed 85% electrolysis breakthrough. I trust that this one is true and it therefore looks like a very impressive and hopefully useful technology.
 
There is no over 100% efficiency, that's an oxymoron. 100% would be Perpetuum Mobile already, over 100% would indeed be a true miracle.

It depends on your system boundaries though right? They are probably full of crap obviously in that video, but it doesn't mean there is not some way to get energy from another source. If you do then the efficiency is not >100%, rather the perceived efficiency is >100% since the bounds are set incorrectly.

I actually wanted to see more about that water heater thing. I don't believe it is >100% efficient, but high efficiencies are still worthwhile and that is a nifty way to heat water as opposed to a heating element.
 
Anyway, the discussion about the 'Water Fuel Cell' nonsense is an unfortunate deflection away from the original post about the claimed 85% electrolysis breakthrough. I trust that this one is true and it therefore looks like a very impressive and hopefully useful technology.

Depends on the price and reliability though. If they go bad really quick then it is not worth much. If it is robust though then it really is amazing.

It is more efficient than SMR (78-80%) which is the prefered way to make hydrogen now. Of course that is inaccurate I suppose.

Remember Electricity generation via coal for example is probably 35%, then the electrolysis 85% so overall is = 30% roughly. Still if you use wind, solar etc... then it doesn't matter as much what the efficiency is in the generating of electricity part.

And the SMR efficiency numbers don't count all the cost either to be honest so it makes comparison difficult.
 
What's keeping us at the moment from adding a hydrogen generator and a fuel cell to every wind power plant, for use as a buffer for electricity demand? Price, obviously, but how much cheaper would it have to get?
 
What's keeping us at the moment from adding a hydrogen generator and a fuel cell to every wind power plant, for use as a buffer for electricity demand? Price, obviously, but how much cheaper would it have to get?

I don't know off the top of my head. I just read a paper on this about a month ago. It is definitely something that is being taken seriously.

Compressed air storage is what they think is more economical now, but compressed air is only stored air. Stored hydrogen seems nicer to me though more expensive.

Look it up in google scholar though if you want there is a lot of research on it. And later I can post something if you don't have access to scholar papers.
 
The turbines would need a water source, hydrogen storage, and a more complex power generation scheme that includes the fuel cell.

As wind is a minority producer and not as controllable, it's not going to be common that a wind farm can produce more power than the grid will want. Even if that were the case, the electrolysis of water and then passing through a fuel cell would have efficiency issues.
 
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