Potential Hydrogen Production Breakthrough
September 12, 2014 6:10 PM   Subscribe

Cheaper, faster production of hydrogen from water claimed.

Further details in a paper in the journal Science.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere (34 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oops, sorry. Full paper is behind paywall.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 6:21 PM on September 12, 2014


At last, my plan comes together. Soon.
posted by angerbot at 6:24 PM on September 12, 2014


"The process uses a liquid that allows the hydrogen to be locked up in a liquid-based inorganic fuel. By using a liquid sponge known as a redox mediator that can soak up electrons and acid we've been able to create a system where hydrogen can be produced in a separate chamber without any additional energy input after the electrolysis of water takes place."em mine.

So, correct me if I'm wrong but this seems more more a breakthrough in storage as opposed to production?
posted by vapidave at 6:28 PM on September 12, 2014


This doesn't really solve anything. Generation of hydrogen was never the issue; that's always been possible. The difficulty is storing an adequate quantity of the stuff in a small space without liquifying it; that's extremely tough.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:29 PM on September 12, 2014


vapidave: ""The process uses a liquid that allows the hydrogen to be locked up in a liquid-based inorganic fuel. By using a liquid sponge known as a redox mediator that can soak up electrons and acid we've been able to create a system where hydrogen can be produced in a separate chamber without any additional energy input after the electrolysis of water takes place."em mine.

So, correct me if I'm wrong but this seems more more a breakthrough in storage as opposed to production?
"

Perhaps.

I was simply going by this sentence: Chemists from the University of Glasgow report in a new paper in Science today on a new form of hydrogen production which is 30 times faster than the current state-of-the-art method.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 6:33 PM on September 12, 2014


How can it possibly work? There's no mention of graphene anywhere.
posted by davemee at 6:36 PM on September 12, 2014 [11 favorites]


i too have an opinion on a single sentence
posted by kagredon at 6:39 PM on September 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


University of Glasgow. So that's how Alex Salmond intends on making a go of it.
posted by arcticseal at 6:40 PM on September 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


The photo they included in the main link is all "Cheap, green energy -- brought to you by a creepily-staring homonculus living in your dishwasher.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:40 PM on September 12, 2014 [4 favorites]


The breakthrough is that the process works at atmospheric pressure and with lower input energy, typical of what we get from renewable sources like solar:


Currently, industrial production of hydrogen relies overwhelmingly on fossil fuels to power the electrolysis process. The most advanced method of generating hydrogen using renewable power uses a method known as proton exchange membrane electrolysers (PEMEs). To reach optimum efficiency, PEMEs require precious metal catalysts to be held in high-pressure containers and subjected to high densities of electric current, which can be difficult to reliably achieve from fluctuating renewable sources.

The new method allows larger-than-ever quantities of hydrogen to be produced at atmospheric pressure using lower power loads, typical of those generated by renewable power sources. It also solves intrinsic safety issues which have so far limited the use of intermittent renewable energy for hydrogen production.

posted by gimli at 6:41 PM on September 12, 2014 [8 favorites]


I was hoping to see yet another local news station reporting that someone has made an amazing water powered car that THEY don't want you to know about.
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:43 PM on September 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


The "alternate energy" domain has these kinds of breathless announcements of dramatic breakthroughs all the time. Usually it turns out that they are fishing for investors. And few of them ever turn out to be real.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:05 PM on September 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


The process uses a liquid that allows the hydrogen to be locked up in a liquid-based inorganic fuel

This better not be methanol (which it probably is). Otherwise all you've managed to do is dirty up a renewable energy source.

Actually I'm a moron. It won't be methanol if it's inorganic. Which makes me wonder, what are they locking it up in and does that simply become the fuel?
posted by Talez at 7:07 PM on September 12, 2014


From the paper's abstract:

The electrolysis of water using renewable energy inputs is being actively pursued as a route to sustainable hydrogen production. Here we introduce a recyclable redox mediator (silicotungstic acid) that enables the coupling of low-pressure production of oxygen via water oxidation to a separate, catalytic hydrogen production step outside the electrolyzer that requires no post-electrolysis energy input. This approach sidesteps the production of high-pressure gases inside the electrolytic cell (a major cause of membrane degradation) and essentially eliminates the hazardous issue of product gas crossover at the low current densities that characterize renewables-driven water-splitting devices. We demonstrated that a platinum-catalyzed system can produce pure hydrogen over 30 times faster than state-of-the-art proton exchange membrane electrolyzers at equivalent platinum loading.

The Editor's Summary (same link):

Photosynthesis splits water to provide protons and electrons for plant growth; oxygen is a by-product. When chemists split water, they're also more interested in making fuel, and the simplest product is hydrogen (a combination of protons and electrons). One challenge is keeping the reactive hydrogen and oxygen product streams separate. Rausch et al. present a scheme that captures the protons and electrons in a molecular cluster of silico-tungstic acid. Later, they expose the cluster to platinum, coaxing the acid into releasing hydrogen. Eliminating the mixing risk increases the potential for household use.

(Silicotungstic acid from Wikipedia): It's apparently a currently commercialized industrial chemical.

I've been interested in solar hydrogen electrolysis for a long time (I did my senior chemistry research seminar on it when getting my Chemistry bachelors back in the early 90s) and while I'd hardly claim to be any kind of expert or to follow every development, I still try to keep up on the major developments. Popular articles do tend to default to the "new era of magic energy" hyperbole boilerplate. With all these grains of salt on hand this does seem like something novel and potentially significant to me, and I hope some more in-depth coverage shows up (lest I have to track down a copy of Science in a university library and apply my poor battered rusty knowledge of chemistry against it).

This seems to me not so much "the big breakthrough" as potentially adding some major pieces to the puzzle - lowering the pressures involved, dramatically increasing speed of production, simplifying separation of the products - all significant, positive developments. Hydrogen-mediated power systems as a significant part of the world energy solution aren't here or necessarily around the corner but it's foolish to discount it out of hand and the the outright dismissal of this research is frankly dumb. It's clearly legitimate research, slightly breathless press-release reporting notwithstanding.
posted by nanojath at 7:10 PM on September 12, 2014 [18 favorites]



The photo they included in the main link is all "Cheap, green energy -- brought to you by a creepily-staring homonculus living in your dishwasher.


I've met Lee Cronin, and if he's a homunculus, he's made of some spectacular new nanomaterial with the highest density of self-regard ever found in earthbound matter.

Lee if you're reading this, you know I love your work, but man, your self-trumpet blowing is almost as bad as Bartosz's.
posted by lalochezia at 7:19 PM on September 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


Both Toyota and the U.S. government is betting on household hydrogen sometime soon - the U.S. is subsidizing industrial hydrogen pipeline networks, regionally and nationally, and Toyota has a car that can also power your house with a hydrogen fuel cell. It's not too far fetched to think hydrogen and an in-home fuel cell generator could replace natural gas and furnace/hot-water - so long as they had a ready supply of hydrogen that could be made as cheap and abundant as natural gas.

Well, now guess what?

(I was kinda hoping for fusion, but I'll take this.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:20 PM on September 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


What you describe Slap, would be a dream world. Imagine if we all could produce our own electricity and fuel, cheaply, reliably, greenly, for about the price of a car (or two).
posted by notyou at 7:33 PM on September 12, 2014


If this pans out and scales up, does it solve the problem of storage for solar? If it did, that would be tremendous. We could end all our energy future issues within a few years--at least, within a decade, I'd think...
posted by saulgoodman at 7:48 PM on September 12, 2014


The "alternate energy" domain has these kinds of breathless announcements of dramatic breakthroughs all the time. Usually it turns out that they are fishing for investors.

While this is true how many of those have published their results in Science? It's one of the premier journals in the world.
posted by Justinian at 8:02 PM on September 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


With all this hydrogen and cool super materials like graphene why can we bring back dirigibles? The Hindenberg was terrible but there were fewer actual deaths than most jet crashes and with good anti-spark tech it should never happen again. So cool to fly slowly sipping tea.
posted by sammyo at 8:13 PM on September 12, 2014


Not to mention that if this stuff works, we might be able to finally tell Saudi Arabia to kiss our collective grits...in a purely geopolitical sense, of course.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:20 PM on September 12, 2014


Imagine if we all could produce our own electricity and fuel, cheaply, reliably, greenly, for about the price of a car (or two).

Well, most people would need to have their hydrogen piped in, the way natural gas is now. It's just that instead of fracking, a gigantic chunk of the demand could be met with large-scale renewables. Hydrogen is easier to store than raw electricity for supply when the sun goes down or the wind doesn't blow, and can be piped to areas of high demand the way natural gas is now.

Ideally, it'd be the price of a fuel cell car motor (about the cost of a modern furnace) and the cost to retrofit the pipes to hydrogen spec, and will offer a lot more efficiency in return.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:35 PM on September 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Most people would have to pipe it in. Plenty of us in the west could make our own.

It's already very close ($30k for the rooftop solar with extra capacity for cracking, some storage, a fuel cell, a fuel cell car). Any advances along that chain make it cheaper and closer. It's a possible thing in our lifetimes, assuming leadership and vision.

(As if.)
posted by notyou at 10:11 PM on September 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Japan, for example, which has real problems with securing imports of carbon fuels, and no longer trusts nuclear, is going all in for H, I read recently.
posted by notyou at 10:17 PM on September 12, 2014


Japan, for example, which has real problems with securing imports of carbon fuels, and no longer trusts nuclear, is going all in for H, I read recently.

Hydrogen on its own isn't really a fuel source. It's an intermediate store of energy from elsewhere whether it be renewables or fossil fuels. Most hydrogen produced in the world today is from steam reformation of the lightest hydrocarbons like methane. Even the article states that they're looking at Australian coal as a hydrogen source with the only real benefit that you can more easily pull CO2 out of syngas than you can from flue gases from a coal fired power plant.

I guess the biggest advantage to hydrogen is you can pull a shitload out of it from coal instead of oil. Since the two biggest coal exporters are Australia and Indonesia you don't really have to worry about middle eastern geopolitical stability wreaking havoc with your fuel source. The occasional flood in southeast Queensland, yes, but when I/P flares up your fuel costs don't jump 15%.
posted by Talez at 10:49 PM on September 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


The breakthrough is that the process works at atmospheric pressure and with lower input energy, typical of what we get from renewable sources like solar:


I think they say it works with lower power from RE sources. Whether it reduces the energy it takes to produce hydrogen would be far more interesting. Perhaps the biggest barrier to hydrogen use as a storage medium is the relative inefficiency of the electricity to hydrogen to electricity process, where you typically lose 40-50% of the energy, as opposed to ~20% for battery or other storage. Changing that figure would go a long way to changing the likelihood of a hydrogen economy.
posted by biffa at 11:29 PM on September 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


I met Lee Cronin at a talk last year, and quickly formed the impression that he is going to either win a Nobel Prize or become one of the world's few genuine Bond-grade scientist supervillains. Yes, when your research group is named after you there might be suggestions that you have a bit of an ego, but it's worth noting that Cronin made full professor at one of Scotland and the UK's leading universities at the age of 36.

There are some brilliant and egotistical scientists who fall into the trap of assuming that they must be right about anything they think about (cough, Fred Hoyle, cough). Cronin strikes me more as the sort whose ego would make him cautious of announcing anything that might leave him with egg on his face. This project may well turn out to have implementation problems or be less efficient on an industrial scale than it is in the lab, but I very much doubt that Cronin's blowing smoke here.
posted by Major Clanger at 12:27 AM on September 13, 2014 [1 favorite]


In academia, it's standard that everyone refers to Professor Jane Doe's research group as "the Doe Group" or "the Doe Lab". So that's not a sign of ego. It's weirder when people name their groups something else. When I first joined my current university and saw signs for the Emotion Lab, I immediately imagined a bunch of people crying and screaming and throwing things at each other.
posted by Humanzee at 5:38 AM on September 13, 2014 [5 favorites]


Honestly I wish more scientists would blow their own horns more frequently and loudly, it might compete a bit with the incessant self-cheerleading of the ultra-capitalist money changers, war-mongers, and silicon technophiles magically disrupting things like security-less, benefit-less menial domestic piece-work.
posted by nanojath at 6:16 AM on September 13, 2014 [2 favorites]


If this pans out and scales up, does it solve the problem of storage for solar? If it did, that would be tremendous.

No. Orders of Magnitude away from that. Grid storage is hard, because a gigawatt-hour is a tremendous amount of energy.

What it would solve, however, is something no less important. After power generation, the biggest source of man-made CO2 is transportation. Getting our cars to clean exhaust is a big win.

The problem with hydrogen was having to use fossil fuels to generate the power to split it from water. If we can use solar, we're not robbing Peter to fill Paul's fuel cell. Hydrogen becomes a truly clean fuel.
posted by eriko at 7:16 AM on September 13, 2014 [2 favorites]


Oil being vulnerable to disorder in the Middle East is really yesterday's issue. We've seen the two key oil benchmarks (WTI -- basically the Western Hemisphere east of the continental divides, and Brent, the rest of the world) go on their longest steady decline not linked to an economic crisis in many years, at the same time as Israel and Hamas went to war and as the Iraq/Syria wars amped up their intensity hugely.

I would argue that the greatest political volatility in the energy market has shifted from military action in the Middle East to environmentalist action in the developed world -- nuclear and coal being taken off-line, and being put back on-line, and non-conventional oil and gas exploration and infrastructure being allowed or disallowed, for political reasons. For example, I have to think that Australian environmentalists are so aghast at Abbott's rescission of their advances under the last Labour government that they are planning to do something to coal in the next Labour inning that they think will be irrevocable.
posted by MattD at 7:30 AM on September 13, 2014


Well, right Eriko--but it was my impression that hydrogen is energy dense enough to provide for power grid needs to with the right plumbing in place. Is that not the case? What about a less centralized distribution model with power generated at the point of use and excess capacity stored in hydrogen? What technical hurdles remain to keep us from transitioning to that sort of system (not political hurdles, just technical ones I mean)?
posted by saulgoodman at 12:56 PM on September 13, 2014


In academia, it's standard that everyone refers to Professor Jane Doe's research group as "the Doe Group" or "the Doe Lab". So that's not a sign of ego. It's weirder when people name their groups something else.

Is this an American thing? I can't think of single example from the UK academic groups I know.
posted by biffa at 5:00 PM on September 13, 2014


It's a US thing that has made its way to the UK.
posted by lalochezia at 6:13 AM on September 24, 2014


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