by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Science and society are common topics of discussion here. As frequently noted on this blog, a great number of our foriegn policy and domestic economic headaches could be made to go away if we were not dependent on foreign oil or oil at all. Alternatives have been discussed, but one of the most promising technologies – hydrogen – has time and again run into the issue of how to manufacture carbon-free or clean hydrogen. A new technology developed by doctoral student Erik Koepf working out of the University of Delaware and currently being tested in Switzerland shows promise of delivering hydrogen production free from carbon dioxide and other undesirable emissions.
Traditional methods of manufacturing hydrogen involve fractionating natural gas. This process negates any benefit of burning the hydrogen because the volume of carbon dioxide released in the manufacturing process is comparably as polluting as burning traditional fossil fuels. Koepf’s process essentially involves super heating zinc oxide via solar concentration in a cylinder filled with layers of ceramic and ultra-high temperature insulation materials. Zinc oxide is a benign substance similar to baking soda. Once a high temperature is achieved – in the test, a temperature of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit or approximately 1/3 the temperature of the surface of the sun will be used – a gravity fed system is used to introduce zinc oxide to the cylinder. This causes a chemical reaction that converts the zinc oxide into a pure zinc vapor. This vapor is catalyzed with water during the next step producing hydrogen and zinc oxide. Because one of the byproducts of the process is the primary catalyst for the process and possibly reusable, this has the theoretical benefit of being a self-sustaining process.
All of Koepf’s work up to this point has been on the design itself, building the prototype and building and testing the control systems of the prototype. April 5 marked the start date for six weeks of testing the reactor at temperature at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. These tests will not only measure the reliability of the reactor mechanism(s) at temperature but measure the amount of hydrogen produced and help determine if the production rate merits taking the reactor design beyond the prototype stage and into an industrial scale test. Although Koepf’s work has been primarily funded by the Federal Transit Administration, he is currently working to patent his design through the University of Delaware’s Office of Economic Innovation and Partnerships. If this works, Erik Koepf could be a name that goes down in the history of science as someone who fundamentally influenced the world and likely for the better.
The question then becomes, if this works, how do we best proceed? Manufacturing facilities, safe delivery channels and safe storage facilities will need to be developed. Transportation and power companies will need to be incentivized to adopt hydrogen. Key to all is the manufacturing process.
Given that the oil industry directly used their improper influence over the Bush Administration to both force an invasion of Iraq – a country that did not attack us on 9/11 – and evade attacking Saudi Arabia – the country that did man and fund the 9/11 attacks but were and are business partners in the oil industry with the Bush family – if this technology does play out in providing a sustainable clean form of alternative energy, should we as a nation allow the oil industry to participate in the manufacturing and distribution of hydrogen given the heinous nature of their past bad acts? Should we nationalize hydrogen production and distribution? Should be create new monopolies discrete from the petroleum industry? Should we simply bar those bad actors from participating by force of law?
Once we overcome the supply issues for carbon-free energy, there is no reason we should allow the same corporate criminals currently running the oil industry to take over the (potentially) burgeoning hydrogen industry. They are known bad actors with a propensity to pursue profit over all other considerations including peace, human health, safety and welfare and the environment. We have options and at this early stage it is a pertinent and prudent time to consider those options if (and when) we can move forward with the first viable form of alternative energy. Which options should we consider? What do you think the best political and economic path to energy independence is once the technical barriers are breached?
What do you think?
Source(s): Geek.com, University of Delaware UD Daily, Phys.org
~ Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
@Idealist: Don’t know where they get the heat. Nuke?
Most likely, radio isotopes (like plutonium) is a very common solution in space; I understand a Stirling Engine recycles waste heat to power on the Space Station, and I think some Mars mission craft are powered by plutonium decay heat driving a Stirling. The closed system is the key, exactly what is needed in space.
Stirling engines have even been designed that run off of the body heat in the palm of your hand.
ID707,
Why do you think they want you under control, but not dead?
AY2,
“—Or is it better to keep sending billions of dollars every year to people who want us dead.”
Why George 1, 2 and 3 don’t want us dead, just under control.
TonyC.
Even low-tech swedes have used Stirling motors in their submarines for 25 years (ca). Quiet. Don’t know where they get the heat. Nuke?
Tony C,
Good job. The critics will say you have to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity. How about clean coal technology?
The solution to the battery problem is pretty straightforward, and involves only steel. Do like the San Francisco street cars; put electric rails in the roads and let those power electric cars. It would not be hard to charge the cars for the electricity used, and not hard to control the electric rails for safety (so they only provide current when a duly identified car is tapping it).
If you run your car using compressed air (which can be very efficient), the car can refuel itself while it is driving: Just compress air into steel bottles, a car could easily carry a 50 gallon reserve of compressed air, which it could use for many miles of travel between powered roads. Get rid of gas stations; you refuel on the fly.
Batteries? We don’t need no stinkin’ batteries! All we need is high quality steel bottles, and that is not expensive at all.
I do not think hydrogen is our future; in any case we have been able to produce it clean (by solar concentration) for many decades, with tech that originated a century ago.
I will use Spain’s existing, fully operational, no exotic material approach as an example. They use a simple parabolic dish, made of glass with an aluminum oxide reflectant. The glass is cast in a parabolic mold. It is produced in square sections that can be assembled on a frame. Altogether, the reflective surface is about 1000 sf. It focuses sunlight to (roughly) a point; that produces an operating temperature of about 720C (1300F).
So far, nothing exotic at all; just cast mirrors arranged on a light frame, and a hydraulic computer controlled system that points the rig at the sun.
The focal point of the rig is a Stirling Engine, aka a Heat Engine. If you haven’t seen one, the idea is exactly the same as a Steam Engine, but Stirling’s idea is a closed system, in which the water/steam gets recycled, condensed, and re-used, ad infinitum. It was clever, and has been refined many times since then. The big advantage is it requires no supply of water, all it requires is a heat source to force the expansion of a material.
(It also does not require water, per se, because the cycle is sealed, other gases or materials can be used).
Spain uses a modernized Stirling Engine at the focal point of their dish. Just like a steam engine, this has a (rather large) piston that moves back and forth, and incorporated into this piston are permanent magnets, that move past a coil, and generate electricity directly.
Each of these dishes produces about 25 kilowatts of electricity for (on average) 6 hours per day, so about 150 kilowatt hours.
Spain uses that current directly in its grid; but direct current can be used for the electrolysis of water; separating water into hydrogen and oxygen. The efficiency of this process is typically about 50%, but it is important to note that the “inefficiency” produces waste heat. But heat is a good thing we can recycle with a Stirling, so we may get the efficiency up to 75%; i.e. we can store about 112 kWh in the form of separated water. The same process can compress the hydrogen and oxygen to liquid in standard steel tanks.
The modern Stirling does not require fossil fuels for lubrication; and does not produce any emissions. We have robots that can clean the parabolic dishes. What I admire about Spain’s installation is that nothing exotic is ever required, it does not use anything that is not widely abundant just about anywhere on the earth. Steel, glass, aluminum, ceramics, copper wire, iron, silicon. To me, that has huge advantages, it means the equivalent skill level of garage mechanics and home electricians can service the operation, or even build a generator from scratch: Hobbyists build fully working and efficient Stirling engines in their home machine shops.
In any case, converting sunlight to electricity, and using electricity to obtain hydrogen from water, is nothing new. The real question in this arena is how efficient the zinc-oxide process is, the ratio of energy input to energy output. If it is less than 75%, I am not sure we shouldn’t just follow Spain and kick it old-school.
“In 2012, if you want to reduce your use of fossil fuels in favor of clean energy sources, expect to be taken to task by Republicans. Even if you’re the United States Armed Forces.
Under most of the mainstream media radar, the U.S. military has emerged as one of the nation’s biggest adopters of clean technologies including solar power, wind energy, green buildings, and biofuels. And why not — who knows better the cost, in dollars and human lives, of our (to use George W. Bush’s phrase) addiction to oil? The Pentagon is the world’s largest single consumer of energy, spending about $15 billion a year and accounting for 70 percent of the entire U.S. government’s energy bill. Even more to the point, one out of eight soldiers killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2007 were protecting fuel convoys, a telling statistic that has continued in Afghanistan as well.
So you would think that any effort to diversify the military’s fuel sources away from petroleum, and help end our dependence on often-hostile foreign oil suppliers, would be cheered by politicians of all stripes. And you would be wrong. ” Huffington Post
bettykath,
The damage in W.V. is done. No going back.
They have to mine various components to create the batteries. Do you think the batteries fall out of the sky? Pick your poison.
We could also invest in better mass transit. It takes about 10 minutes by bus to “go to town” and well over an hour to return. “In” bus is in the am, the “return” is in the pm. Not too bad if I worked downtown. I drive, but with better bus service, I’d use it. How about bringing back the trains? The “bullet” train is Japan is marvelous. The buses and trains in Europe are convenient and great.
“There is more fossil fuel energy in the form of coal in the continental United States than in all the known oil reserves on the planet. How about doing some research on that.”
==========================
Have you seen what the coal companies have done to W.V.? We need to invest in the sun and better batteries for when the sun isn’t shining.
idealist707 1, April 7, 2012 at 7:59 am
…
I will leave to Dredd to explain, which will be easy for him. No snark intended.
==============================================
No way I am going to bite on that agent 707 … 😉
Putting water in your fuel tank instead of gasoline or diesel. What a novel idea. How many hundreds of billions of dollars have been squandered and lives wasted for oil? What if all that money had been invested in researching alternative energy sources instead of protecting big oil.
BTW – There is more fossil fuel energy in the form of coal in the continental United States than in all the known oil reserves on the planet. How about doing some research on that.
Or is it better to keep sending billions of dollars every year to people who want us dead.
The petro owners will get this banned or file lawsuits or patent or trademark infringement suits again this and keep it away from consumer hands…..
Clean hydrogen technology has been invented a few times now already.
But the inventor’s seem to die off…
Stan Meyer – Dune Buggy that ran on water
He was a shame to hear that he was poisoned (March 98′) and longer with us. He died in the parking lot of a restaurant in his home town of Grove City, Ohio. Sharks came a week later and stole the the dune buggy and all of his experimental equipment, according to his brother, Steve. Stan said while he was alive, that he was threatened many times and would not sell out to Arab Oil Corp.s The Military was going to use this technology in their tanks, jeeps, etc. He had patents on his invention and was ready for production. Only $1,500 to equip your car! See the Videos above. No gasoline, just water. Stanley said he was offered a billion dollars from an Arab to basically shelf his idea. Stan said, “no, this technology is for the people.”
John Kanzius – cancer research
The late John Kanzius found a way to burn salt water with the same radio wave machine he is using to kill cancer cells.
Kanzius was testing his external radio-wave generator to see if it could desalinate salt water, and the water ignited. A university chemist determined that the process is generating hydrogen, which can be burned as fuel.
While the phenomenon is interesting, it is not yet practical for energy generation as long as more energy is consumed by the radio frequency device than is produced for burning. Efficiency-wise, they started at around 76 percent of Faraday’s theoretical limit. (Other Hydrogen-from-Water methods, such as the one being pursued by Bob Boyce, are approaching 7x Faraday). They subsequently quietly reported that they surpassed 100% efficiency, which would mean that the system is somehow harnessing environmental energy such as from the zero point or some other yet-to-be discovered phenomenon.
Messpo,
And how Bushy and Co, plus big oil and the politicians too will act to defend heir interests. But GeneH did touch on that, but not sure if his presentation provided a sure way to avoid an effectful resistance or sabotaging from them.
OT
Let us hope that it is not a version of “cool fusion”.
The physics are so easy that I can sketch them (I think):
Energy input (for heating) plus two chemical compounds equals
waste energy not used plus one original compound and one element.
The energy (of potential oxidation) produced in the form of hydrogen must be higher than the energy input required and the energy cost of the eventual input compound which is not recovered, ie its replacement cost.
The actual energy transformations occuring in the electron movement between levels (in dissassociation of hydrogen from its bound condition to oxygen) and other chemical details, I will leave to Dredd to explain, which will be easy for him. No snark intended.
Good work, Gene. It’s going to take a multi-faceted solution to wean us from Mid-East oil. This looks like a another good approach. I also think Dredd’s got a good point about methanol and substituting it into the pre-existing infra-structure. There’ s probably not one answer but many answers.
The questions have certain necessaary pre-conditions (förutsättningar):
—-That it is not bought out by some front to big oil, and then reported to be unsucessful after diverse expensive industry-scale trials.
—-If it should succeed, that it is not met by counterpropaganda. “Would you drive around with a hydrogen bomb in YOUR car.”
—-political resistance in the form of state regulation for “safety reasons”, etc.
—-the young scientist together with his magic formula disappears myteriously in the private jet over the Bermuda triangle!
Having covered a few hinders, I leave the minor social and economic problems like society bending and other contentionious issues to lesser minds. Self-irony, I hope is well understood.
“Which options should we consider? What do you think the best political and economic path to energy independence is once the technical barriers are breached?
What do you think?”
There is “energy independence” and there is “energy independence.”
Civilization is addicted to dirty oil, political groups are addicted to the oil of their enemies or potential enemies.
The discussion about “independence” includes notions of both kicking the habit and kicking the vulnerability to an enemy.
The “economic path” seems to be a part of both aspects.
How much it costs to do something is always a topic, but how much it costs not to is a less frequent discussion.
It may just be than an assortment of renewable energy techniques and technologies, including the clean hydrogen, are in order.
Those that can use existing infrastructure “less costly” in one sense, but won’t be ecstatically embraced by the larger public unless they are also $X dollars per gallon or less.
Then there is the phased implementation theory, a sub-division of conservation of energy I suppose, where we focus on the areas of highest waste and inefficiency.
In that endeavor, doubling gas mileage is one goal, using clean energy in power plants is another, improving the power grid is yet another.
One hopeful tactic in that sense, is methanol, which can use existing infrastructure, and fit into a number of slots that dirty oil now dominates.